Man guilty of false reports in fake abuse case

A jury in Common Pleas Court hearing an unusual criminal case that pitted two residents of an affluent neighborhood in East Whiteland against one another over unsubstantiated accusations to authorities of child sexual abuse in retaliation over a civil lawsuit, returned with a verdict last week.

On Friday, after about three hours of deliberations, the panel of seven men and five women found the defendant in the case — a 48-year-old information technology consultant specializing in finance, banking, and insurance, and the father of a middle schooler who was a member of the local Boy Scout troop — guilty of false reports of child abuse and retaliation against a witness or victim.

The man was acquitted on a separate charge of attempted retaliation.

The charges he was found guilty of, both misdemeanors, were leveled against the man after the target of his accusations, an East Whiteland father who lives in the man’s development, pursued a private criminal complaint against him when local authorities declined to arrest him.

The defendant, who left the Chester County Justice Center with his wife and attorney after the jury returned with its verdict shortly before noon, will be sentenced at a later date.

The verdict in Judge Analisa Sondergaard’s courtroom came after four days of testimony, including that of the defendant, who maintained that he had never specifically accused his neighbor — an attorney who was a leader in the local Scout troop and who is a partner in a Philadelphia law firm — of sexually assaulting his son.

Rather, the man told the jury that he had only wanted to keep the attorney from violating Boy Scout rules involving one-onone contact with children, which he contended the man had done by driving his son home from a camping trip with no one else present, and pressed the matter with authorities.

“At any point, did you ever use the term ‘sexual assault?’ ” in conversations with the Boy Scout leaders, child welfare investigators, or police, concerning the attorney’s interactions with his son, the defendant’s attorney asked him during his testimony Thursday. “No, no at all,” the man answered.

The jury’s verdict, however, signaled that they did not credit the defendant’s testimony and instead believed the others who said that he specifically indicated that

his son had told him he had been “touched inappropriately.”

In an abundance of caution, the MediaNews Group has decided to withhold the names of both the defendant and the alleged victim because of the nature of the assault accusations involving the defendant’s 13-year-old son.

State and local authorities believe those claims were made up by the IT consultant as a means to incriminate the attorney and gain revenge against him because of a lawsuit filed over a contentious dispute involving the homeowner’s association at Malvern Hunt, where both live.

The case was prosecuted by the state Attorney General’s Office — which inherited the matter after a Common Pleas judge overruled the decision of the Chester County District

Attorney’s Office not to file charges against the defendant for harassment, false reports of child abuse, false reports incriminating others, and retaliation against witnesses or victims. Senior Deputy Attorney General Thomas Ost-Prisco, a former top prosecutor in the D.A.’s Office, who tried the case, declined to comment on the jury’s verdict.

The case began in December 2020, when the attorney filed his complaint at the District Court in Tredyffrin Township.

In it, he wrote that in October of that year, the IT consultant had spoken with leaders of Boy Scout Troop 76 in Frazer and said that the attorney had abused his son, who was 13 years old at the time. The alleged assault had supposedly taken place during a car ride from a scouting event when the attorney was alone with the boy.

The first report the consultant made was on Oct. 12 to Andrew Nusbickel, a trooper leader. The following day, he sent an email again making allegations that his son was sexually abused, according to the criminal complaint the attorney filed. Nusbickel testified on Monday about what he had been told.

Before taking any action, however, the Boy Scout officials told the consultant that they were mandatory reporters and would be legally obligated to report the accusations to the state’s ChildLine abuse hotline, which would effectively trigger an investigation by local authorities.

On Tuesday, a caseworker from the county Department of Children, Youth and Families, testified that she had spoken with the IT consultant about the matter as part of her official investigation into the ChildLine report. She said that he told her his son had been abused.

“He said his son had told him that the alleged perpetrator had touched him inappropriately,” said investigator Willietta Harris, under questioning by OstPrisco. “Although I don’t recall the exact words.” But when she tried to question the boy about what had happened, the man said he did not want that to happen.

“He did not want his son’s name to be in public records because he was the victim of sexual abuse,” Harris said.

Next to testify was East Whiteland detective Sgt. Patricia Doyle, an expert in child abuse cases. She said she was contacted as part of the ChildLine complaint and opened an investigation. But attempting to get the child in to question him proved difficult. She said the man cancelled at least one appointment when she had reserved the facilities of the D. A’s Child Advocacy Center.

“He didn’t understand why I needed to interview him,” said Doyle in her testimony. “He indicated he didn’t want to do that and asked if he could take it back. I said no, that’s not the way it works.”

In her eventual taped recorded interview with the boy, which was played for the jury, he said that he had only been alone with the attorney, the father of one of his classmates, for “about 10 seconds” in a car at the end of a Scout trip. “Did anything happen?” Doyle asked the youth. “No, we were just quiet,” he responded.

The charge of retaliation came from the efforts of the man to get back at the attorney for filing a lawsuit in Common Pleas Court involving the man’s actions as president of the Malvern Homeowner’s Association. The man acknowledged on the stand that he had told his son not to go the the attorney’s house to visit his classmate, and that his son had begun “acting differently” afterwards.

That change in mood, he said on the stand, was what led to his suspicions about inappropriate behavior.

As part of Ost-Prisco’s case, he was permitted by Sondergaard to question the attorney, who took the stand to deny any improper behavior with the 13-yearold and explain his lawsuit about the Homeowner’s Association, about the overall impact the case has had on his life.

He said he understood after the reports of abuse had been labelled “unfounded” by CYF and police that nevertheless the records of the investigation would stay active for a year after the case was closed in November 2020. Knowing that report was out there caused him a great deal of anxiety, he said.

“My life will never be the same,” the man told the jury. “Do I lose sleep over it? No. But where there is smoke there is fire. And (people) could hear about it. Do I think that some of them might have heard? Yes.”

To contact staff writer Michael P. Rellahan call 610-696-1544.