Former Pittsburgh-area Catholic school teacher, a Marianist Brother, charged with abusing children in Australia

Brother Bernard Joseph Hartman 

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported, this week, yet another from a Pittsburgh-area Religious Order, for whom current criminal sex-abuse charges are pending:

A Roman Catholic religious brother who taught from 1986 to 1997 at North Catholic High School in Pittsburgh is facing trial in Australia on multiple charges of beating and molesting four children in that country more than 30 years ago.

A Melbourne court this week found sufficient evidence to order Brother Bernard Joseph Hartman to stand trial in April 2015 on 18 charges of abuse.

He returned to Australia in 2013 -- two years after one of his accusers first went public -- to face the charges. But his superiors with the Marianist Province of the United States first learned of accusations against him in 1997, when they removed him from his teaching position at North Catholic in Pittsburgh and sent him to a treatment center, according to the Rev. Martin A. Solma, provincial for the Marianist Province of the United States….

Brother Hartman, 74, who has been a Marianist brother since 1958, faces 18 criminal charges, including indecent assault, act of gross indecency and assault dating back to the 1970s and early 1980s, when he was posted at St Paul's College in Melbourne.


He is charged with molesting two boys at the college and two girls whose families he had befriended.

"He was a bit of a sadist," one of his accusers said in a statement to Melbourne Magistrates Court this week, according to an Australian Associated Press report. "After more than 30 years I am still suffering. ... My innocence has been taken by a man of God."…

According to the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People -- the policies on sexual abuse adopted by Roman Catholic bishops in Dallas in 2002 -- a confirmed abuser is no longer permitted to "present himself publicly as a priest." While Brother Hartman is not a priest, the Conference of Major Superiors of Men -- the umbrella group for male religious orders -- agreed in 2002 to "honor the values and principles of the Dallas Charter."

Brother Hartman continued to present himself to the public as a religious brother in the years since he was accused, with no indication he was in bad standing. A 2008 photo of a smiling Brother Hartman alongside other brothers appears next to a news item on the Marianist website celebrating their 50th anniversaries with the order. Brother Hartman returned to North Catholic in Pittsburgh in 2009 to take part in celebrations of the Marianists' 150th anniversary of ministry in Pittsburgh, and the homilist recognized him by name during the celebration.

"If the order knew he had sexually abused kids, that was totally inappropriate and insulting," said the Rev. Thomas Doyle, a Virginia-based priest, canon lawyer and contributor to a 1985 report warning of the sexual-abuse crisis about to explode in the Catholic Church. He has long been one of the hierarchy's most outspoken critics and an expert witness on behalf of plaintiffs suing the church.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/local/city/2014/03/22/Former-North-Catholic-teacher-charged/stories/201403220087#ixzz2wmVkEYLf

This story was brought to my attention by an individual in the Pittsburgh Area, Mike Ference, who both has for years been compiling notes about the Rev. John Wellinger (d. 2006), a notorious Roman Catholic Priest and abuser who was the pastor of the Roman Catholic Church where I was married, and who baptized my two oldest sons.

Ference has documented evidence that then Bishop Donald Wuerl (now Cardinal Archbishop of Washington DC) marshaled massive resources, both within and outside of the Diocese of Pittsburgh (notably elected officials in the state of Pennsylvania), in the protection of Wellinger.

You can read more about all of this at this link.