Prosecutors say a former Neshaminy Kids Club employee sexually assaulted six boys 20 years ago

Bucks County prosecutors on Wednesday added additional criminal charges to the case against a former Neshaminy Kids Club employee who they now say sexually assaulted six boys he met through the after-school program more than 20 years ago.

Gerald Spoto, 41, has been charged with indecent assault, corruption of minors, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, and related crimes in repeated assaults on the victims over the course of four years while working at the Kids Club through Herbert Hoover Elementary School in Langhorne, according to prosecutors.

Spoto, who said little during a brief appearance before Magisterial District Judge Daniel Baranoski, waived his preliminary hearing in the case. He is scheduled to appear before a county judge in Doylestown for an arraignment on Feb. 26.

His lawyer, Gail Marr, asked Baranoski to reduce Spoto’s bail from $100,000 to somewhere closer to $25,000, noting that the crimes alleged by prosecutors are decades old and that Spoto hasn’t had any contact with the victims since they were children.

But Chief Deputy District Attorney Kristin McElroy argued against reducing Spoto’s bail, saying that he still has regular access to children and that he recently attempted to adopt a child.

“There is no way for the community to be safe if he is out on bail,” she said.

Baranoski denied the motion. Spoto remained in custody.

Two of the victims’ families filed reports about the alleged assaults, in 2013 and 2017, according to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest. However, no charges were brought against him at the time, police said, because the victims were not willing to cooperate or could not be reached.

That changed in December, when Middletown Township detectives followed up on the inactive files, and were able to make contact with one of those victims, as well as three others who said they had been molested by Spoto in the same time period. More recently, detectives were able to contact the two remaining victims.

All six men said they experienced a similar pattern of abuse at Spoto’s hands. He befriended them through the after-school program, and in some instances was hired by their parents to babysit them.

When left alone with Spoto, usually at his home in Langhorne or while he was driving them in his car, police said, he would grope the boys, perform sex acts on them, and force them to perform sex acts on him. The boys were preteens at the time, some as young as 10.

One victim said Spoto threatened to kill him if he told anyone about the abuse, and said he would “move on” to his younger brother, whom police identified as one of the other victims in the case.

The victims also reported other abusive behavior, including being forced to drink alcohol and watch violent videos of people being mutilated. One victim told police that Spoto would invite other men to his home and force the boy to watch as they performed a group sex act.