Pittsburgh Criminal Law Blog

When there are allegations of sexual assault, the first two things the police are focused on identifying is whether the sexual incident occurred and whether it was consensual. In some situations, a person may make up allegations with various goals. Sometimes, a person in Pittsburgh will lie about sexual assault in an attempt to gain full custody of a child. In other situations, a person will lie about sexual assault to get revenge.

It's unclear why one woman lied about being sexually assaulted by her baby's father. However, the woman is now facing misdemeanor charges for obstructing justice and making false allegations.

In our last post, we wrote about a second-grade teacher who is facing charges for child pornography and sexual assault. The police reports that teacher logged onto a child porn forum about 20 times in 2010.

When the police were searching the man's home, they also found a homemade video of a partially naked 12-year-old girl. The video is three years old and shows part of a man posing the girl for the video. David admitted that he is the man in the video, but there have not been any reports of more recent videos.

The man is also facing scrutiny for an unusual collection.

When people are arrested on criminal charges, others often judge the individuals for how they look. Sometimes, people assume that if a person has been arrested for a crime, everything about that person is bad. You'll hear things like, "He seemed so nice," as if an arrest negates the fact that a man was actually nice.

In reality, there are many good people in Pittsburgh who make mistakes and face criminal charges for those mistakes. Sometimes, a person will become addicted to a negative behavior, but he or she will work to change those habits alone.

After learning about a second-grade teacher who was arrested on child pornography charges, one can't help but wonder if that's what happened.

Often, when an age gap between two people gets bigger, it becomes more difficult for them to guess the other person's age with accuracy. However, that does not diminish an individual's responsibility when knowing a person's age matters.

For example, if a man in Pittsburgh was interested in having sex with or buying a younger woman a drink, it would be the man's responsibility to make sure the woman was of age. One man was recently arrested and is facing 15 years in jail for soliciting a minor.

In many situations, when something bad happens, people react with extreme, emotional solutions. After the sex abuse scandal at Penn State, some parents are suggesting new laws that would mandate more background checks for everyone who works with children in the entertainment industry.

The nonprofit organization that is the driving force between the proposed legislation argues that every child in the entertainment industry has brushed shoulders with pedophiles -- and they want to change that.

To combat the problem of sex crimes against children, the organization is backing legislation that would require background checks of entertainment professionals who work primarily with children.

Our last post discussed a 40-year-old man from Pennsylvania who is facing 27 rape charges. His criminal defense attorney objected to the charges for a number of reasons, including the fact that the two teens who accused him of rape only reported a total of 18 incidents of sexual encounters and some of those incidents only involved oral sex.

Today, after more than 80 years, the definition of rape was redefined by the FBI. Under the previous definition of rape, only women could be victims, only vaginal or anal sex constituted rape, and the woman must have physically resisted her attacker.

When an individual is accused of having sex with a minor, how many charges of rape are appropriate? Should there be one charge for each alleged incident of sexual intercourse?

Following a preliminary hearing, one Pennsylvania man is currently facing 27 counts of rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and related offenses. The man's criminal defense attorney objected to the number of charges. Two teenage girls made accusations against the man, but together, they testified to 18 incidents of sex.

Although that is nine shy of the 27 charges, the judge insisted that all the charges would remain in place until trial. Given the details of the story, one can't help but question how many charges will stick when the case goes to trial.

The Catholic Church has faced an endless amount of scrutiny lately, especially regarding child abuse and child pornography charges. Earlier this month, a Catholic priest was arrested for suspicion of viewing child pornography in the rectory of his Pittsburgh church.

The 62-year-old priest had been employed at the church just a few weeks before the accusations arose. According to the complaint, a church employee walked into the rectory and allegedly saw a picture of young boy who was naked from the waist down. The woman also claims that the words, "Hottie Boys," were on the computer screen that contained the nude picture.