Second Blair County friar commits suicide in province under sex abuse investigation

By Mike Wereschagin And Brad Bumsted
Tribune-Review
July 1, 2015

http://triblive.com/news/adminpage/8666863-74/office-province-friar#axzz3egI23DE2

 A Blair County friar hanged himself two days after agents with the state Attorney General's Office raided a nearby monastery connected to a sexual abuse scandal, the Blair County Coroner's office confirmed Wednesday.

The Rev. David Kaczmarek, 53, died about 6 p.m. Saturday at St. Joseph's Friary in Hollidaysburg, the coroner's office said. Another friar found him about 8 a.m. Sunday. The Immaculate Conception Province website, of which St. Joseph's is part, lists Kaczmarek as provincial secretary.

On Thursday and less than four miles away, state investigators raided St. Bernardine Monastery, where a friar accused of molesting children killed himself in 2013. Kaczmarek was not a target of the investigation, a source told the Tribune-Review.

Both the St. Bernardine Monastery and St. Joseph's Friary are part of the Immaculate Conception Province of the Franciscan Friars of the Third Order Regular. St. Joseph's serves as the province's home for semi-retired friars, according to the province's website.

The Rev. Patrick Quinn, provincial of Immaculate Conception, declined to comment, according to a woman who answered the phone at the province's office.

Chuck Ardo, spokesman for state Attorney General Kathleen Kane, declined to comment as well.

Brother Stephen Baker fatally stabbed himself in the heart at the monastery in 2013. Nine days earlier, the Catholic diocese in Youngstown, Ohio, said it settled with 11 former students who claimed Baker abused them while at John F. Kennedy High School in Warren, Ohio, from 1987 to 1990.

Baker, 62, coached baseball and wrestling and taught at Catholic schools in several states. That included a stint as athletic coordinator at Bishop McCort Catholic High School in Johnstown from 1992-2001.

Eighty-eight Bishop McCort students alleged Baker molested them, and won an $8 million settlement in a lawsuit against the Franciscan province and the Altoona-Johnstown Catholic diocese, which used to run the school before it became an independent nonprofit.

More victims have come forward since the settlement, said Richard Serbin, the lawyer who represented some of the 88 students. None of them brought up Kaczmarek's name, he said.

“Over 30 years, I've identified over 90 child predators, but this person was not on my list,” he said. “He is unfamiliar to me.”

The investigation that led to the raid Thursday began in 2014 when agents started looking into Baker's death, and might be expanding to examine the Altoona-Johnstown diocese, where more than 20 priests have been accused of abusing children over nearly 30 years, sources told the Trib.

“For the second time in less than three years, a Catholic cleric has committed suicide in a central Pennsylvania church facility run by the Third Order Regular Franciscans,” said Judy Jones, Midwest associate director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP. “We urge anyone who saw, suspected or suffered clergy sex crimes or other misdeeds in the Altoona area to speak up, call police, protect others and start healing.”