Former Central Bucks choir director pleads no contest to sex abuse, recording of former students
A former popular Central Bucks School District choir director has acknowledged that he engaged in inappropriate behavior with former students, including a sixth-grader in 1991.
Joseph Ohrt, 56, pleaded no contest Thursday to charges of indecent assault, corruption of minors, tampering with evidence and invasion of privacy. The plea was entered with no negotiations for sentencing. He could face 15 or more years in state prison.
In a no contest plea a defendant does not admit guilt, but acknowledges there is enough evidence that the prosecution could prove its case to a judge or jury.
Ohrt, an acclaimed choir instructor, was charged in February with secretly recording an adult former student while he was changing clothes at Ohrt’s Buckingham home. He was later separately charged with sexually assaulting an 11-year-old and a 13-year-old student in the 1990s.
With his pleas, Ohrt will need to register with Pennsylvania State Police as a sex offender within the next 10 days, and he will undergo an evaluation by a state board to determine if he is a sexually violent predator, which carries additional restrictions under Megan's Law.
Bucks County Judge Jeffery Finley deferred sentencing for 90 days to allow for that evaluation. Ohrt remains free on bail. Neither he nor his attorney Marc Neff commented as they left the courtroom Thursday.
Following the February arrest of Ohrt, who worked in the district for 35 years, the Central Bucks faced public scrutiny over its handling of the previous abuse allegations.
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It was later revealed that the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office had investigated abuse allegations in 2016 involving the first victim, then a high school senior and choir student, and Ohrt, but did not find enough evidence to bring charges.
After graduating from Central Bucks West High School, the man briefly moved into an extra bedroom at Ohrt's Buckingham home at the teacher's invitation.
The second investigation, which resulted in the charges related to the recording, was launched last year after the now adult victim filed a report with ChildLine, the state’s child abuse hotline, alleging Ohrt sexually assaulted him as a student.
No criminal charges were brought on those allegations, but new ones involving secret video recordings emerged after investigators left a business card at Ohrt's home when they went to question him about the ChildLine allegations.
Last October, another young man, who had been living with Ohrt, came to the Central Bucks Regional Police Department to report that a few days earlier Ohrt had told the man he needed to move out of his home immediately. The man provided police with bags and a laptop computer he said Ohrt gave him and asked him to get rid of.
The man, who had found the police officer's business card, turned the items over to the police department.
The bags he provided police contained underwear, another laptop computer, external hard drives, wall chargers, a clock and a broken casting of an upper torso and two SD cards. Police also discovered four hidden camera devices with the ability to secretly record audio and video.
The SD card contained multiple videos of a man, later identified as the 2016 student, including one where his genitals were exposed, authorities said. When police spoke to the main he was visibly shaken and claimed he had no idea about the existence of the video.
Following the hearing, prosecutor Brittney Kern confirmed that the secretly recorded video was taken when the man was no longer a student, though authorities believe other video seized could have extended back to 2012.
Two more former students, now ages 42 and 40, came forward with allegations that Ohrt inappropriately touched them more than 30 years ago after the initial arrest, resulting in the filing of additional charges of indecent assault involving a minor and corruption of a minor.
The earliest incident occurred in 1991, when Ohrt was a music teacher at Linden Elementary School. A parent and sixth-grade student reported allegations of inappropriate behavior with Ohrt to the school principal and guidance counselor.
The boy told investigators that Ohrt would regularly take him out of homeroom and bring him to his empty classroom where they sometimes watched movies and ate snacks, according to Kern. He recalled on the day he was assaulted, he said Ohrt was helping him play the piano.
The second incident about four or five years later when another student, then 13-years-old, claims Ohrt assaulted him in the basement of his home. The boy had been babysitting for Ohrt and his wife, at the time.
It is unknown if those abuse reports were investigated by the school or police, but the school district transferred Ohrt to Central Bucks West High School, where he remained until his resignation in March.
His resignation followed an unexplained five-month leave of absence that started abruptly last October. The Central Bucks School Board initially approved a retirement request for Ohrt effective in June, but later rescinded it after Ohrt resigned.
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Earlier this year, the families of two Central Bucks West students sued the school district and unidentified district employees alleging they knew about previous allegations of inappropriate conduct with students involving Ohrt but failed to take action to protect them.
In the civil suit the families allege that Ohrt engaged in non-consensual inappropriate conduct with their sons, who are 15 and 16, in the weeks before his sudden leave of absence.
Bucks County District Attorney Matt Weintraub said his office investigated the lawsuit allegations but no criminal charges were filed.
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This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Ex-CB West choir director pleads no contest in sex abuse case
