Johnstown Sex Abuse Lawyer Files Civil Lawsuit Against the Employer of Barto, the Pedophile

A civil lawsuit has been filed against the employers of Johnnie Barto, the pedophile pediatrician as they already knew that the accused is a threat to the patients and yet they let him practice in their establishment without raising any questions regarding his conduct.

Five of the formal patients of Barto are seeking financial compensations from his employers. This March, Barto was sentenced to at least 79 years of imprisonment for sexually assaulting 31 minors, most of them were his students.

The lawsuits bring the allegations on the Laurel Pediatrics Associates that they have been aware for two decades about Barto’s conduct being a serious danger to the patients and yet they allowed him to treat as well as molest these children. No comments were received from the clinic.

Four Jane Does and one John Doe are seeking compensation from Conemaugh Memorial Medical Center. This is where Barto had privileges. In the statement this hospital released, they called Barto’s actions to be reprehensible and they have nothing to do with it.

Johnstown sex abuse lawyer Sarah Klein said at a press conference, “We’re really just getting started.” Klein is a former Olympic gymnast and she is also the first survivor to speak of sexual abuse of former national team doctor Larry Nassar. “There’s a massive problem in the medical community here and in other places, and we’re going to insist on change that makes children safe.”

Astonishingly, even after having a chance to stop Barto, the state authority completely let it slip in 2000. Two young girls who were molested in 1999 came forward to the Pennsylvania Board of Medicine. The regulators threw the case out saying that the allegations were “incongruous to his reputation.” And they also allowed him to practice medicine further.

Being a well-known pediatrician in Johnstown and a member of the elected school board, he was well respected and that is why no one believed that he could be a pedophile.

Barto, after this incident, felt “invincible” as he has told the authority after his arrest and that is why he kept molesting even a dozen of young patients till he was arrested in January 2018.

The civil lawsuit alleges that Barto’s colleagues were “on notice that Barto presented an unreasonably high risk of harm to his minor patients, and yet through silence, acquiescence, denial, and misrepresentation they failed to act in any way to protect Barto’s minor patients,”

Two other health providers who minimized the allegation against Barto are still working with Laurel Pediatrics. They are pediatrician Dr. Elaine Confer and nurse practitioner Bradley Callihan.

In October 2016, Barto molested a 10 years old boy and his 8 years old sister at Laurel. After the incident, the mother of the children confronted Confer, their regular pediatrician. The lawsuit says that Confer “confirmed that she had been informed previously about Barto’s inappropriate conduct with children,” and promised “they would speak with him again about his ‘odd bedside manner.'” However, Confer did nothing of that sort.

Almost a decade back, Barto also examined a 16 years old girl with Callihan and an office manager who is still unidentified. Barto was accused of performing unnecessary genital and breast exams in this case. However, as the suit said, Callihan and the office manager said that Barto was just being “thorough” and if there was a lump found, the same patient and her parents wouldn’t have accused him of molesting her.