A former police chief was convicted of raping a child and abusing related crimes. Victims said she began when she was about four years old and has occurred hundreds of times over the next seven years.
A lawsuit against former Weissport police chief Brent Robert Getz, 30, and his friends in Carbon County, northeastern Pennsylvania, suffered several years after police first learned of the allegations.
In addition to the number of rapes, the jury has each one of Lee Highton’s Getz unwillingly deviant sexual intercourse with a child, exacerbated vulgar assault on a child, and vulgar assault on a child under the age of 12. Convicted of the crime. Canceled, he was made a jury trial.
After him Arrested in 2019, Getz was fired from his job as police chief in Weissport, a town of about 400 people living 77 miles (124 km) northwest of Philadelphia. A message asking for comment was left to his lawyer, Brian J. Collins.
Accomplice Gregory E. Wagner Jr., 31, pleaded guilty to child rape in November 2020 and agreed to testify to Getz. Both men, who were adolescents when the abuse began, are awaiting a ruling.
According to Getz’s 2019 arrest affidavit, the victim said Wagner had raped her to her primary school substitute teacher in early 2012 when she was 11.
Victims were interviewed by the Scranton Child Advocacy Center, involving a child welfare agency in Carbon County. The nurse concluded that the child’s symptoms and explanations were consistent with sexual abuse.
Leslie Slingsby, executive director of the Mission Kids Child Do Vocacy Center in East Norriton, is an organization that helps respond to allegations of child abuse, with victims “experience more than absolutely necessary.” I did. “
“These are tragic cases because it takes a very long time for this kid to get justice, and because this kid keeps them safe and the kids in the area are safe,” Slingsby said. Told.
Pennsylvania Jerry Sandusky’s Child Sex Abuse Scandal, “But this certainly should have been resolved before that,” Slingsby said.
According to the affidavit, Franklin Township police officers spoke to Wagner in May 2012, but Wagner stopped the interview minutes later and hired a lawyer.
According to the affidavit, more than a year later, in June 2013, the same officer asked Wagner again. This time a lawyer was present. Wagner denied the allegations and no charges were filed.
Sean McGrin, an agent at the Attorney General of Pennsylvania, said, “No one believed her and she wanted to show people evidence, so it’s been a few since the first complaint was made to Wagner. “A month later,” the victim recorded a short cell phone video that Wagner had watch pornography. , Wrote in Getz’s arrest affidavit.
Three years later, in 2015, a criminal complaint was prepared against Wagner, but was rejected by the district judge because the Attorney General’s office described it as a mishandling.
Franklin Township officials “reviewed” the case in 2018, at which point the victim revealed that Wagner’s friend Getz had also sexually assaulted her. The Attorney General’s office said..
According to the arrest affidavit, she said both men had been sexually assaulted hundreds of times a week for about seven years.
Franklin Township Police Chief Jason Doll asked the state prosecutor a question and declined to comment.
In September 2018, the Carbon County District Attorney’s Office referred the issue to the Prosecutor’s Office for Getz and to Wagner for Wagner in January 2019, according to the affidavit. Wagner confessed to sexually assaulting a child in March 2019, involving Getz.