Town officials powerless to stop sex ring 'There needs to be a moral investigation of this. It's not gonna come out of the Attorney General's office in Harrisburg'
It's 1996. The Pennsylvania attorney general is an obscure but ambitious political appointee from Pittsburgh named Tom Corbett.
A prominent public figure is caught having sex with a young victim. Investigators would come to believe VIPs are engaging in pedophilia and prostitution, and that the sex ring is well entrenched and politically protected by a corrupt state attorney general's office.
And no one is protecting the young sex victims.
Protecting whom, and why? Gov. Tom Corbett (top) and accused serial pedophile Jerry Sandusky.
Tom Corbett's political agenda and modus operandi began to emerge:
A prominent figure would be sacrificed, but the VIP sex and prostitution ring would be concealed and protected for years. This was done not only to protect Corbett's political allies, but also to protect Corbett's own political fortunes and ambitions.
On Labor Day weekend, 1996 -- about the same time a state grand jury says Penn State defensive coach Jerry Sandusky began using the Penn State athletic shower room and the Second Mile charity to seduce young boys -- a state senator from York, Pennsylvania, Dan Delp, enjoys a weekend of drinking and sex with a 19-year-old girl supplied through contacts with the York County, PA, district attorney's office.
When the pedophile sex scandal becomes public, the case is quickly referred to Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett. Corbett and his close allies would time and again obstruct and cover up the sex ring -- for more than fifteen years.
Jim Sneddon was the editor and publisher of the York Dispatch. Sneddon recounts how the attorney for the daily newspaper, Niles Benn, secretly hired a private detective to uncover the truth about the ‘VIP’ sex ring. But then Sneddon was fired, and the newspaper and its lawyer concealed the work of their private eye.
York Police Commissioner Herbert Grofcsik says even he was powerless to expose the courthouse sex ring. Yet the truth slowly emerged.
As well, AG Tom Corbett's political agenda and modus operandi began to emerge.
A prominent figure would be sacrificed, but the VIP sex and prostitution ring would be concealed and protected for years. This was done not only to protect Corbett's political allies, but also to protect Corbett's own political fortunes and ambitions.
Sound familiar?
In this video, former Pennsylvania Police Chief Herbert Grofcsik discusses how he was forced to ask federal agents for an investigation into the sex abuse of young people at the hands of prominent and protected Pennsylvanians.
As Pennsylvania newspaper editor and publisher Jim Sneddon and others explain it, the overtly political Pennsylvania attorney general's office was the obstacle protecting the sex ring. Soon complaints would emerge that Corbett obstructed any number of high profile investigations to ease and help his path to the Pennsylvania governor's office.
"I said there needs to be a moral investigation of this. It's not gonna come out of the Attorney General's office in Harrisburg," Sneddon says he knew.
But there was a problem: the FBI office in Harrisburg had close working contacts with politicians and law enforcement officials close to the perpetrators and Attorney General Corbett.
"My intention was federal," Grofcsik says. "The reason I didn't go to the FBI in Harrisburg is because we had agents assigned to (the local) police. We had a DEA agent, we had an FBI agent. I have no reason to suspect that they did anything wrong, but because they were there so long, I just felt that they weren't the right people to go to. ... I didn't know where they would go, so I was suspicious of the next couple of levels."
Over the coming years, at every turn, they and others would say the Pennsylvania Attorney General's office, and Tom Corbett, stood in the way of stopping VIPs from having sex with children.
Later, court officers would openly boast of enjoying sex with children, and praise Corbett for protecting their illicit activities, and another local DA, Tom Kearney, would be asking federal officials to investigate contractors with ties to Corbett. DA Kearney told the FBI that concerned citizens and even high-ranking law enforcement officials in York County are helpless to stop the well-placed courthouse pedophile and prostitution ring. DA Kearney in his letter asked the FBI to "review and follow-up."
"I note that both (former York City controller) James Sneddon and former York City Police Chief Herb Grofcsik both confirmed in recorded interviews that information ... was forwarded to ... Federal authorities although it is unclear what became of that investigation," Kearney wrote in a letter sent to the FBI.
Posted November 28, 2011