PITTSBURGH Priest charged in death had past accusations

The diocese had investigated the priest in the mid-1980s.
PITTSBURGH (AP) -- A Roman Catholic priest charged in the alcohol-related death of a University of Pittsburgh football player was the subject of complaints years earlier from parishioners who said he plied teenagers with alcohol, a diocesan official and records said.
Diocesan officials investigated accusations in the mid-1980s that the Rev. Henry Krawczyk gave an 18-year-old college student beer, made a sexual advance toward the same young man and offered other college students marijuana, the Rev. Ronald Lengwin, the spokesman for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for its Sunday editions.
Clergy office records also show that a woman complained in 1992 that Father Krawczyk gave her teenage son alcohol, Father Lengwin told the newspaper.
Father Krawczyk, 50, is charged with involuntary manslaughter, reckless endangerment and furnishing alcohol to minors. He is accused of providing alcohol to 19-year-old Pitt wide receiver and kick returner Billy Gaines and five other underage men. An autopsy showed Gaines was drunk when he fell through the ceiling of the priest's church while exploring a crawl space.
Resigned as pastor
Father Krawczyk resigned as pastor of St. Maximilian Kolbe Parish in Homestead, outside Pittsburgh, shortly after Gaines' death. St. Anne's Church, where Gaines fell, was part of that parish.
The priest is on administrative leave. Diocesan officials have not decided whether he can return to the ministry.
Father Krawczyk will have been ordained 25 years next week.
A few years after he was transferred to his second parish, Our Lady of Joy in Plum, Father Krawczyk offered to help parishioners by driving their 18-year-old son back and forth to college in eastern Ohio.
The family later complained to diocesan officials that it was during one of these trips, in 1985 or 1986, that the priest allegedly furnished their son with beer and allegedly rubbed the young man's leg after he had passed out. The family also accused Father Krawczyk of offering other college students marijuana.
When diocesan officials questioned him, the priest admitted he supplied beer, but denied supplying marijuana or making a sexual advance, Father Lengwin said. A psychiatrist evaluated and counseled Father Krawczyk and determined he could return to his job, Father Lengwin said.
The family said they went to police in Plum, where the parish is located, but police never contacted the diocese, Father Lengwin said.
Trouble at last parish
Father Krawczyk was transferred to his third parish, St. Therese of Lisieux, in 1988 and to his fourth and final parish, St. Maximilian Kolbe, in October 1992.
Less than a month after his final transfer, Father Krawczyk's former pastor at St. Therese, the Rev. Hugh Lang, reported that a parishioner complained that Father Krawczyk gave her son alcohol, clergy office records said.
Lengwin said the records are unclear whether the son was 16 or 17. But the records do say Father Krawczyk denied the allegations.