Members of Jehovah’s Witnesses, including three from Pittsburgh region, accused by state AG of child sex abuse dating back two decades

Five Jehovah’s Witnesses in Pennsylvania, including three from the Pittsburgh region, have been charged with sexually abusing children following a statewide grand jury investigation stemming from allegations first raised in 2019.

Michelle Henry, the acting attorney general, announced the cases Tuesday against Marc Brown, 65, of Allegheny County; Raymond Schultz, 74, of Beaver County; Kevin Isovitsch, 51, of Butler County; and two men from Lancaster County, Abimael Valentin-Matos, 42, and Norman Aviles, 44.

All five were members of Jehovah’s Witnesses congregations, and so were the children they assaulted and exploited, the AG said.

The arrests follow charges against four other Jehovah’s Witnesses in October.

In describing the crimes as “sad and disturbing,” Henry said the cases are “even more abhorrent” because the men used their faith communities and their own families to access their victims.

The grand jury said the men sexually abused minors with whom they had close contact. In some cases, the children were family members.

Brown is accused of sexually abusing two sisters between 10 and 13 years old for whom he was legal guardian. Schultz sexually abused two family members when they were between 5 and 10 years old, the grand jury said. Isovitsch is accused of raping his relative when she was 9.

The men from Lancaster County are accused of similar crimes. Valentin-Matos sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl whom he was supposedly “courting” even though she was underage. And Aviles, who was an elder in his congregation, is accused of molesting three children between the ages of 5 and 10.

The overall investigation began in 2019 with a referral from a district attorney’s office to the AG about sex abuse within the Jehovah’s Witness community that led to the charges in October. After the publicity in that investigation, some other victims came forward to recount similar tales of abuse.

In the case of Shultz, the victim, now 27, contacted the AG in November to say she had been abused by him while a member of the congregation as a child.

Agents investigated her claim and identified a second victim, also a relative. The first victim told the grand jury that Shultz molested her in a bed in their house between 2000 and 2005. She said she left the congregation about five years ago and didn’t come to grips with what happened until recently. She said she didn’t tell police earlier because she hadn’t understood what happened and because talking to police in a way that “may bring reproach to Jehovah” was discouraged in the religious community.

She said she eventually disclosed the abuse in a therapy session in March 2021 and also told a family member that she was in therapy. That relative told Schultz, who sent her a $2,500 check without explanation, the grand jury said.

The second victim, now 24, also testified that she was similarly abused between 2004 and 2007. She also received a $2,500 check from Schultz.

“She viewed the payment as ‘hush money,’” the grand jury said.

In the Isovitsch case, his relative, now 26, testified that he sexually assaulted her at his home in West Sunbury when she was 9. He only stopped when his wife came home, she said. She didn’t tell anyone at first but later told her brother, who testified about what she’d said to him. The grand jury also found out that the woman’s father had confronted Isovitsch about the allegations but that Isovitsch “remained quiet” about the accusation.

In the Brown investigation, he had been the legal guardian in Forest Hills for two sisters, now 31 and 29. One said he had sexually abused her regularly between 2004 and 2006 in the shower, her bed and elsewhere in the house, although he called it “horseplay.” The sisters said that Brown had threatened one of them that if she stopped him from abusing her or told someone, he would abuse her sister. In one incident, Brown choked her until she urinated and then made her clean it up, the grand jury said.

In 2006, one of the girls purposely left her diary, which recorded the abuse, in a place where her mother would find it.

The mother read it and kicked Brown out of the house.

The grand jury presented similar accounts regarding the men from Lancaster County, who held positions of power in Spanish-speaking congregations there.

The cases against the five men are filed in the corresponding counties of Allegheny, Beaver, Butler and Lancaster, and they will be prosecuted there. All are in state custody except Aviles, who remained at large Tuesday.