Two lawsuits allege sexual abuse by priest, friar

Two men filed lawsuits Tuesday accusing a pair of Roman Catholic dioceses and a Franciscan province of keeping known sexual abusers in ministry, subjecting each plaintiff to multiple sexual assaults when they were boys.

One lawsuit names a notorious serial predator — the late Brother Stephen Baker, a Franciscan friar who killed himself in early 2013. The lawsuit said the plaintiff, identified by initials T.B., was repeatedly sexually abused as a boy by Baker beginning in fourth grade and continuing into his teen years at Bishop McCort Catholic High School in Johnstown in the early 2000s.

In the other lawsuit, an unidentified plaintiff going by the pseudonym John Doe accuses a former priest, John Allen, of abusing him about a dozen times at a Harrisburg church between 1999 and 2002.

Mr. Allen was a priest in the Diocese of Harrisburg. The lawsuit said he was defrocked in 2006 after a previous victim

came forward in 2002. The diocese included him last week on a newly released list of more than 70 clergy accused of abuse over the years, saying he faced “multiple allegations.”

The lawsuit naming Mr. Allen and the Diocese of Harrisburg as defendants was filed in Dauphin County Common Pleas Court.

The other lawsuit, filed in Cambria County Common Pleas Court, names the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown and the Province of the Immaculate Conception of the Franciscan Friars of the Third Order Regular, based in Hollidaysburg in Blair County.

Complaints in lawsuits give only one side of a case.

The lawsuits come days before an expected release of a redacted report by a statewide investigating grand jury into sexual abuse in six Catholic dioceses, including Harrisburg, and two years after its prequel, a 2016 grand jury report into the Franciscans and the Altoona-Johnstown diocese.

The 2016 investigation led to indictments of Baker’s superiors. Two of them pleaded guilty earlier this year to one count each of endangering the welfare of children and received probation.

Baker abused scores of boys in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, many of them students at Bishop McCort. More than 100 have settled claims in the millions of dollars with the Franciscans and Catholic dioceses.

The lawsuits accused the church leaders of failure to protect children from known predators in ministry. The Allen lawsuit accuses the former priest of assault.

Harrisburg-based attorney Benjamin Andreozzi, representing both clients, said the two lawsuits were filed within the statute of limitations because the abuse was recent enough. Mr. Andreozzi said he also represents a victim of another Harrisburg priest but that abuse took place too long ago for a lawsuit to be filed .

Mr. Andreozzi said both plaintiffs spoke to the office of the attorney general, which oversaw both grand jury investigations.

Mike Barley, a spokesman for the Harrisburg Diocese, said it was reviewing the suit and could not immediately comment. The diocese “would again pass on our most sincere apologies to the survivors of child sexual abuse, the Catholic faithful, and the general public for any abuses that occurred,” Mr. Barley said. The diocese said it believes Mr. Allen is still living.

The Franciscan province and the Altoona-Johnstown diocese declined to comment. Mr. Allen could not be reached.

The Harrisburg lawsuit alleges that as far back as the 1980s, a seminary intern at then-Father Allen’s Snyder County parish reported allegations of sexual misconduct by the priest to then-Bishop William Keeler, to no result. It alleged that after more allegations, the diocese sent the priest for treatment before returning him to ministry.

The suit said John Doe began working as an altar boy at age 10 in 1999 and that Mr. Allen “lasciviously leered at, groped and sexually molested him” about a dozen times at the church until the priest’s ouster in 2002.

The Baker lawsuit cited evidence in the Franciscans’ criminal trial that his superior knew of allegations against him since the 1980s.

The lawsuit describes in explicit detail a modus operandi that Baker became notorious for among other victims.

The friar befriended the plaintiff when he was a fourth-grade football player and soon they were attending games, where they sat in the stands and Baker began rubbing the boy’s genitals over his clothing.

In 2002, even after the Franciscans had officially removed Baker based on an allegation, the friar remained volunteering at Bishop McCort. By then the boy was in high school but quit the football team when he learned Baker was the team “trainer,” a position for which he lacked qualifications, the lawsuit said. But Baker used pretexts to get the boy alone in the training room and elsewhere, where the lawsuit described in explicit detail how he sexually abused the boy.