Tuesday, March 28, 2000
Children's home ex-staffer guilty
BY DAVID ECK
Enquirer Contributor
LEBANON — A former foster care worker was sentenced to five years in prison Monday after pleading guilty to raping a boy at the Midwestern Children's Home in 1993.
Roy Puckelwartz, 44, will also be labeled a sexual predator when he is released from prison. Nine other charges, including rape, gross sexual imposition and attempted rape involving two other boys were dismissed.
Some of the dismissed charges carried a penalty of life in prison, said Assistant Warren County Prosecutor Joanne B. Hash.
She was pleased with a plea arrangement, particularly the sexual predator designation.
“In this case, the label was as important as any sentence,” she said. “It will follow him wherever he goes.”
The boy Mr. Puckelwartz
pleaded guilty to raping was 12 and 13 years old when the attacks occurred, Mrs. Hash said.
All three boys, who are now 18 or older, accused Mr. Puckelwartz of sexually abusing them from June to December, 1993, when they were residents of Midwestern.
In court Monday, Mr. Puckelwartz, dressed in an orange jail jumpsuit, wavered before accepting the plea agreement and the agreed-upon sentence.
“What I'm about to do is very difficult,” he said, his voice breaking. “I must say I am scared. I'm trying to do the best thing for all of us, for all concerned. Seven years ago, I acted sexually irresponsible.”
Mr. Puckelwartz, a former Church of Christ minister, was accused of molesting the boys while he and his wife, Bonnie, worked as live-in supervisors at the Harlan Township center for troubled youth.
He was fired from the center in late 1993 after members of Mr. Puckelwartz's former church in Michigan alleged that he had made sexual overtures to a 16-year-old boy there.
Mr. Puckelwartz and his wife were living in Florida and attempting to adopt a nephew in December when a Warren County grand jury indicted him on two counts of rape involving the first boy at Midwestern. The additional charges were filed in February.
He told Warren County Common Pleas Judge P. Daniel Fedders that he was hoping for a sentence of less than five years because the molestation happened so long ago and he has lived a clean life since. He also asked for mercy.
“I could have made it harder for (prosecutors) to have a case,” he said. ”I was honest.”
But Judge Fedders told Mr. Puckelwartz he was holding to the plea arrangement, particularly with regard to sentencing.
“In terms of the overall plea, it would have been very difficult for my client to defend the allegations as a whole,” said Donald Oda, Mr. Puckelwartz's attorney. “He continues to adamantly deny improper conduct with the other two boys.”
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