Former North Catholic Teacher Faces Trial in Australia on Child Abuse Charges

By Peter Smith
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
April 20, 2015

http://www.post-gazette.com/local/city/2015/04/20/Former-North-Catholic-teacher-on-trial-in-Australia-on-child-abuse-charges/stories/201504200023

Brother Bernard Hartman

A Roman Catholic religious brother who worked for years in Pittsburgh is scheduled to go on trial today in Australia on charges of sexually abusing children there.

Brother Bernard Hartman of the Marianist religious order returned to Australia in 2013 to face 18 charges of sexually assaulting two girls and two boys in the 1970s and early 1980s, when he was assigned to a Catholic school in Melbourne.

Details about the trial are limited because the presiding judge has issued a “suppression order,” according to the Office of Public Prosecutions in the Australian state of Victoria.

Under Australian law, a judge can partially or entirely forbid the release or publication of details about a court case under certain circumstances, including those that might distress or embarrass alleged victims of sexual offenses, according to a Melbourne Law School study.

According to earlier news reports, Brother Hartman is accused of abusing two male students at his school and two girls from families he had befriended.

Brother Hartman, who is in his mid-70s, was a science teacher and was assigned to North Catholic High School for brief periods in 1961 and 1979 and for a longer stretch from 1986 to 1997.

He was abruptly removed in 1997, without public explanation, when the St. Louis-based Marianist Province of the United States received a report about an allegation from his time in Australia.

It took more than a decade, however, for criminal charges to materialize in Australia.

After the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported last year on Brother Hartman’s pending trial, the Diocese of Pittsburgh said it had not learned of the reason for his removal from North Catholic until now. The diocese sent letters to North Catholic alumni informing them of the charges and asking any victims to come forward.

One person did come forward, and within weeks 19 people reported abuse over the decades by eight Marianist brothers who worked in Pittsburgh, most of them deceased. Spokespeople for the Allegheny County district attorney and Pittsburgh Police said they do not have any active investigations involving Brother Hartman.

The Rev. Martin Solma, the provincial or top administrator of the Marianist province, last year wrote an apology to victims of abuse by members of the order. In a brief reply to a request for comment in the Hartman case, he said, “Because he is involved in judicial proceedings, we are not at liberty to discuss his situation. We continue to pray for all parties involved.”

Although Brother Hartman was not a priest, the umbrella group for male Catholic religious orders in the United States had in 2002 agreed to abide by the same policies approved by Roman Catholic bishops. Under them, any priest who committed a single, confirmed case of abuse was forbidden from public ministry or from presenting himself publicly as a priest.

Yet while the order said he was removed from ministry with children, Brother Hartman had represented himself for years afterward as a brother in religious garb and at official Marianist functions. He had spent much of his time after 1997 at a Marianist site in Dayton, Ohio.

Peter Smith: petersmith@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1416; Twitter @PG_PeterSmith.