A former Warminster cop pleaded no contest in the sexual abuse of five boys

A former Warminster police officer entered a no-contest plea Thursday to sexually assaulting five underage boys he encountered during his 30-year stint with the department, closing the case on what prosecutors described as pervasive abuse that preyed on vulnerable teenagers.

James Carey, 54, said little during the hearing in Doylestown before Bucks County Judge Wallace Bateman. The plea came suddenly — Carey’s trial was scheduled to begin Monday, and prosecutors had prepared for a lengthy proceeding with dozens of witnesses.

Carey’s plea covered several counts of involuntary sexual deviate intercourse, rape, statutory rape, corruption of minors, and related offenses. He faces a maximum of 94½ to 189 years in prison and is scheduled to be sentenced sometime next month.

His attorneys, Sara Webster and Josh Buchanan, declined to comment after the hearing.

Bucks County District Attorney Matt Weintraub described Carey after his arrest last year as “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” He met the victims between 1988 and 2000, bonding with them through the department’s D.A.R.E. antidrug program at schools in the Centennial School District in Warminster. Carey also ran the Fire Explorers program for the township’s fire department, interacting with teens interested in becoming firefighters.

His access extended beyond his on-duty hours, thanks to his volunteer work at a township rec center, as well as chaperoning overnight camping trips to the Poconos and to Camp Ockanickon, a Boy Scout facility in Pipersville, according to court filings.

Carey retired from the department in 2009. But the abuse was discovered years later, when one of the now-adult victims filed a report with county detectives in May 2020.

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The man said Carey, whom he knew through the D.A.R.E. program, followed him into the rec center bathroom and told him he needed to search him after finding a bag of marijuana, according to the affidavit of probable cause filed for his arrest. During an invasive pat-down, he said, Carey groped him and forced him to perform a sex act.

That first assault was followed by several others, including one at the boy’s home when his parents were away, according to First Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Schorn. As an adult, the victim told investigators he was afraid to tell anyone about the assaults because he didn’t want people to think he was gay and because he feared being arrested by Carey for the marijuana.

The other victims told a Bucks County grand jury that Carey acted as a father figure, making excuses to spend time with them alone, and then groped them or forced them into sexual encounters

“When you are that young and something like that happens, the self-value of yourself isn’t very high,” one of the victims said during Carey’s preliminary hearing last year. “It destroyed my life.”

Carey singled out children from broken homes, Schorn said, and often coerced them into silence using his position as an officer: He told one of the victims that if they didn’t “work something out” he would have to arrest him on a drug-possession charge.

Another victim was abused by Carey after getting sentenced to community service. Carey, as a police officer, volunteered to supervise the then-teen’s service, and would force him to perform sex acts before signing off on the court paperwork, according to Schorn.

“I can’t help but praise the victims in this case,” Schorn said after the hearing Thursday. “They are some of the most courageous men I have met in my career, especially after the torture they were put through.”

The charges were the first time that prosecutors were able to substantiate the rumors and innuendos that swirled around Carey.

Carey’s reputation for being overly friendly and jocular with teenage boys was well-known around Warminster for years, prosecutors said. An investigation into his behavior was opened in 2001 after a concerned parent contacted Warminster police, but no charges were filed.

Another Warminster resident made a report against Carey to Warminster police in 2006 for an incident that took place when he was a teenager years earlier. At that time, Carey pulled up to the teen’s home while he was mowing the front yard and pretended to arrest him, tackling him and pushing him against his patrol car.

That man, although never sexually abused by Carey, was among more than a dozen other witnesses who were prepared to testify about Carey’s strange, predatory behavior, according to motions filed by prosecutors.

One said that Carey would let him drive his patrol car, handle his gun, and turned a blind eye to him using cocaine, despite catching him while on duty, according to the filing.

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Another said it was “common knowledge” at the time that “strange things happened” to people arrested by Carey.

Carey was fired by Warminster in 2005 for mishandling an investigation unrelated to these allegations, though he later won his job back through arbitration. In between stints, Carey relocated to Cape May County, where he worked as a caretaker at the Driftwood Campground.

In 2006, New Jersey State Police investigated Carey after numerous families complained that Carey acted inappropriately around minors at the campground, showing them pornography and making lewd comments. The case was dropped because the victims didn’t wish to pursue it further.

But the campground owner’s son told Bucks County prosecutors that Carey befriended him, and drove him to Trenton to help buy him heroin. In exchange, the man said, Carey asked him to show him his genitals, and would often take pictures of him naked.