Pa. police officer held in sex crimes
Police said the officer also contacted girls through MySpace.com.
HARRISBURG (AP) ā A small-town police officer was charged Thursday with having indecent contact with underage girls and pressuring girls to have sex with him in exchange for lenient treatment for themselves or relatives.
Robert J. Pavlovich Jr., 39, of Camp Hill, faces charges that include sexual assault, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, bribery and 14 counts of corruption of minors.
He has been suspended with pay from the Marysville Police Department since March, according to the mayor. The allegations date back to 2001, the year after Pavlovich was hired.
Police said one of his victims is mildly mentally retarded and that Pavlovich had contact with girls through the MySpace.com social networking site using a police department computer.
He allegedly told one girl that if she told anyone about what he had done, his wife would divorce him and he would never be allowed to see his daughter.
A grand jury found that Pavlovich asked 14 underage girls to secretly leave their homes and meet with him, solicitations it said were overtly or implicitly sexual or involved illegal behavior such as underage drinking.
The grand jury presentment accuses Pavlovich of touching girls sexually, including one child who Pavlovich knew had psychological problems and previously was molested by a neighbor.
āI read some of [the presentment], and Iām just sick to my stomach,ā Marysville Mayor Deb Troutman said Thursday. She said legal issues prohibited firing Pavlovich outright but the borough plans an emergency meeting at which she intends to push to make his suspension unpaid.
Authorities said Pavlovich told a 15-year-old girl that she would not get in trouble for retail theft if she sneaked out of her house to meet with him late at night. The girl told the grand jury that Pavlovich gave her money to buy crack and she described incidents in which he allegedly overlooked obvious criminal violations involving children.
Another girl, 16, said she was a passenger in a vehicle driven by her 21-year-old brother that was pulled over by Pavlovich. He allegedly later told her that he would not charge her with underage drinking or her brother with drunken driving if she engaged in a sex act with him. She did not, but neither she nor her brother were ever charged.
On several occasions, parents and other adults confronted Pavlovich or the then-chief, Jacob J. Stoss Jr., about alleged inappropriate contacts by Pavlovich with girls.