Former priest secretly filmed teen boy in Target bathroom in Pittsburgh, police say

A former priest named in the 2018 Catholic Church abuse report was arrested Tuesday after police said he filmed a teenage boy in the bathroom of an East Liberty Target store, according to court records.

Paul G. Spisak, 77, of East Carnegie, is charged with sexual abuse of a minor, invasion of privacy and possession of child pornography. He is accused of using his iPhone to record a 13-year-old boy through a gap in the bathroom stalls at the Target on Penn Avenue.

Spisak, a former priest, pleaded guilty to a similar incident at South Hills Village mall in 2006, according to a statewide grand jury report.

In the East Liberty incident, an officer arrived at the Penn Avenue store and found Spisak in his car trying to leave as another man was trying to stop him from doing so, according to a criminal complaint filed in the case.

The man said his 13-year-old son had been in the store bathroom when he noticed someone holding their phone up to a crack between the stall wall and door, the complaint said. He described the device as a black iPhone with several camera lenses and a fold-over case.

Police said the boy left the bathroom and told his father what happened.

Spisak first told police that he had been playing solitaire on his phone, but later admitted to filming the teenager in the bathroom, according to the complaint. He said he had photos on his phone of the boy along with “other photos of unknown males’ nude buttocks and photos of them using the restroom,” police wrote.

Court records show Spisak was released on nonmonetary bond. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Dec. 22.

Diocesan officials said they were not aware of Spisak’s arrest Tuesday until “it was brought to our attention by the media.”

“Paul Spisak has not been an active priest in the Diocese of Pittsburgh since 2002,” the diocese said in a statement. “He was removed from active ministry on Feb. 22, 2002, and has not been involved with any ministry since 2002.”

Spisak is named in the 2018 statewide grand jury report that detailed years of sexual abuse allegations against priests and others within dioceses across the state. The report named some 300 priests and accused Catholic leaders of covering up the allegations and moving those accused from church to church.

From his ordination in May 1973 until he was removed from ministry in 2003, Spisak served at eight churches and was the chaplain at two nursing homes. Most of his assignments were in Allegheny County, though he also served several stints in Washington and Butler counties.

The grand jury report said parish staff at St. Dominic in Donora reported Spisak to the diocese in 1998 after they found “pornographic magazines, tapes and internet material” in his room that depicted “homosexual and sadomasochistic” activities.

Other photos showed Spisak with two different boys in which they were “showing their buttocks,” according to the report. Other photos showed Spisak “pulling down his swim trucks and pulling down the boy’s pants,” the report said.

Spisak told diocesan officials he’d been struggling with “the problem of viewing pornography,” but he denied any sexual contact with either minors or adults. He said he took several high school boys on vacation with him while he was assigned to Donora between 1981 and 1990, though he said the photos were “just for fun,” according to the report.

Several other alleged incidents are alluded to in the information that the diocese turned over to the grand jury, though specifics are not included.

In a 2003 letter informing Spisak that he was being removed from ministry, then-Bishop Donald Wuerl wrote that the removal came “in light of allegations of sexual abuse of a minor which are deemed to be well-established.”

Diocesan officials on Wednesday said that “contrary to information listed in the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report, again, Spisak has not been in ministry since 2002.”

The grand jury report also details an incident in Upper St. Clair in April 2006 in which Spisak was allegedly caught holding a camera through a gap in a bathroom stall door and recording a man who was in the stall.

The report said Spisak initially denied he had a camera. He faked being ill and ran into the bathroom, where a security guard caught Spisak flushing the memory card down the toilet, the report said.