Pa. attorney general charges four Jehovah’s Witnesses with sexual abuse of 19 children

Four men, all Jehovah’s Witnesses, have been charged with the sexual abuse of 19 people who were minors at the time, some of them their own relatives, state Attorney General Josh Shapiro announced Thursday.

When police and agents from the Attorney General’s Office attempted to take one of the men, Eric Eleam, 61, of Butler County, into custody early Thursday morning, he retreated into his bathroom and killed himself.

The charges stem from a grand jury investigation that was launched after The Inquirer published an investigation in 2018 that examined how Witness leaders routinely ostracized and punished survivors — and even their families — if they spoke out about their abuse or sought help from police.

“Most of these defendants used their faith and church to gain access to their victims to build their trust, and then molested them,” Shapiro said. “Some defendants only looked as far as their own families to commit their abuse.”

“These are the types of cases that haunt us,” he said. “They leave an indelible mark on our souls, and as prosecutors, as people of faith, as parents, we can’t escape the impact that these cases have. These 19 children deserved a place to grow up in peace, not to be preyed upon.”

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Details of the four defendants and their alleged crimes come from court records released Thursday:

Jose Serrano, 69, of Lancaster County. He is accused of molesting at least six minors. He confessed to committing many of these criminal offenses to members of his community and to the grand jury. Two of Serrano’s victims testified to the grand jury about his alleged abuse, which included groping that escalated into forcible rape. Serrano was charged with aggravated indecent assault, indecent assault, and endangering the welfare of children.

Jesse Hill, 52, formerly of Berks County, now a resident of Georgia. He allegedly lured young boys in his Jehovah’s Witness congregation to his property for parties in the 1990s with promises of alcohol, marijuana, and pornography. He built a rapport with them by taking them to movie theaters and area malls and providing them with gifts. Hill allegedly groped the children and forced them into oral sex. The grand jury investigation identified at least 10 victims and Hill admitted many of these crimes, Shapiro said. Hill is charged with rape, involuntary deviant sexual intercourse, and corruption of minors.

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Robert Ostrander, 56, formerly of Cambria County, now a resident of New York State. Ostrander’s alleged acts of abuse began in 2006. The grand jurors heard testimony from a relative, who said that he abused her physically at first and then, by the time she turned 15, sexually assaulted her, Shapiro said. Ostrander allegedly sexually assaulted another girl, a member of their congregation. Ostrander is charged with indecent assault, endangering the welfare of children, and corruption of minors.

Eric Eleam, 61, of Butler County. An Eleam relative testified to the grand jury about his practice of using sexual molestation as discipline in the house where she was growing up. She reported this abuse to a parent and to other members of her community. The Attorney General’s Office obtained documents summarizing a meeting in which Eleam told people that “the accounts of sexual assault must be true if she said them, because, quote, [the relative] does not lie.” Eleam was charged with rape, involuntary deviant sexual intercourse, aggravated indecent assault, and endangering the welfare of a child.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses’ roots run deep in Pennsylvania. An Allegheny County man, Charles Taze Russell, founded the millenarian religion in the 1870s. A 2014 Pew study estimated that more than 120,000 Witnesses call Pennsylvania home, while Philadelphia has more than a dozen congregations.

Mark O’Donnell, a former Witness who has spent years researching abuse cases across the country, said he shared information with the Attorney General’s Office to aid its investigation.

”I feel a great sense of relief that the state of Pennsylvania heard the cries of these victims of abuse, and they used their authority to bring justice to these victims,” O’Donnell said. “This, in spite of the obstruction by the Jehovah’s Witness Church and their elders.”

» READ MORE: Watch: Jehovah’s Witnesses official says to destroy records because ‘Satan’s coming after us’

Witness leaders have, in the past, gone to great lengths to withhold information about abusers within their ranks. One official, in 2017, instructed elders — the equivalent of parish priests — to destroy handwritten notes and drafts of internal records, explaining: “We’ve run into difficulties in the past because of the records we have.”

That same year, a judge in California fined the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society of New York, the Witnesses’ corporate nonprofit, more than $2 million for refusing to turn over a secretly compiled list of 775 suspected child molesters within the organization.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), an advocacy group for people who have been abused by members of the religious community, said Thursday that Witness leaders should be held accountable.

“Every Jehovah’s Witness official who knew about, suspected of or shielded these heinous crimes should be fired and charged with failing to report potential child sex crimes to law enforcement. That is how we will deter such callous disregard in the future as a society,” SNAP said in a statement.

Witness leaders, however, have repeatedly said they fight to protect children. “Jehovah’s Witnesses abhor child abuse, a crime that sadly occurs in all sectors of society. The safety of our children is of the utmost importance,” they wrote in a statement.

O’Donnell said he believes the charges that were filed by Shapiro “suggest that the organization’s leadership in Pennsylvania and New York will likewise be held accountable for their role in covering up this abuse.”

Multiple ex-Witnesses who testified before the grand jury previously told The Inquirer that investigators have traveled to several states as part of the probe, and recorded testimony from former elders as well as abuse survivors.

The full scope of the investigation remains unclear. The Attorney General’s Office is asking others with abuse allegations to contact its office through a special hotline: 1-888-538-8541.

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