PENNSYLVANIA
PennLive
By Matt Miller | mmiller@pennlive.com
on July 20, 2015
Claiming the abuse should have been prevented, a Dauphin County woman filed a lawsuit Monday against a former church youth leader and the East Shore church where he spent years molesting her.
The lead defendant in the county court case, Joshua Markelwitz, is serving a 12- to 24-year state prison term after pleading guilty last year to charges that he sexually abused the girl he met through a youth group at Charlton United Methodist Church in Lower Paxton Township.
The woman, who claims the molestation started in 2009 when she was 12, also is suing the Susquehanna Conference of the United Methodist Church.
She contends that church officials didn’t properly screen Markelwitz before allowing him to work with youth and violated their own policies that would have barred him from being alone with the girl on church property.
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