Conviction Draws Interim Suspension

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has imposed an interim suspension of a convicted attorney.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported

A Washington County judge on Thursday sentenced a suspended Roman Catholic deacon to two years of probation and 200 hours of community service for soliciting sex via the Internet from an undercover police officer posing as a teenage boy.

Rosendo Dacal, 74, of McCandless, pleaded guilty in October to criminal solicitation of sexual abuse of children under a section of state law pertaining to depicting sexual acts via computer, photo, video or film. He also pleaded guilty to criminal use of a communication facility. Both are felonies.

Dacal escaped the incarceration he could have faced after asking for leniency, noting that his arrest already destroyed his ministry, that he is separated from his wife of 45 years and can rarely see the grandchildren he had once helped to raise, and then only under supervision.

His crime shattered his American-dream story of arriving as an orphaned teenage refugee from Cuba and becoming what his lawyer called a “Renaissance man” fluent in five languages, with careers in music, teaching, law and eventually ministry.

“There was nobody else to fault but my own stupidity,” Dacal told the judge. “I have paid dearly for my mistakes.”

Dacal said he was in the “same position I was in 1962,” when he arrived as a refugee. “I have no family. I am not able to be of service to anyone.”

Common Pleas Judge Gary Gilman ordered Dacal to serve two years of probation on each count, to run concurrently, and to perform 100 hours of community service, not involving children, each year. Also, Dacal will not be permitted to own a computer or smartphone and must register as a sex offender for the next 25 years. 

Judge Gilman also ordered him to continue undergoing therapy with his psychologist and psychotherapist.

Assistant District Attorney Heather Serrano, had asked for a sentence of nine to 16 months in prison, which is within the standard guidelines.

Judge Gilman, however, said he took into consideration Dacal’s age and that it was a first offense. “A person cannot be judged based upon their last act” but upon “a person’s body of work.”

“The court does not believe incarceration is the appropriate punishment,” the judge said, noting that Dacal also took full responsibility.

“It could have happened but it was not an instance of actual physical contact,” the judge added, alluding to the fact that the person Dacal was communicating with over the internet was not the teen boy he thought it was but an undercover officer.

Dacal was ordained a deacon in 2011. Until his arrest, he had preached and done other ministry at All Saints Parish in Etna and at the Allegheny County Jail, which also revoked his security clearance in April.

Most of the hour-long sentencing hearing was taken up by testimony from Dacal and two other character witnesses.

Michael Colucci, of Cleveland, said he was doing time for robbery at the Allegheny County Jail several years ago when Dacal began to guide him spiritually to overcome addiction and “criminal thinking,” and, upon release, start his own construction business. “He made me want to become a better person,” he said.

Mark DeAndrea, who volunteered with Dacal at the jail, said inmates would crowd around during his teaching sessions. “You could hear a pin drop,” he said.

Dacal himself gave a lengthy account of his life, a trace of his native Cuba in his accent. He told how his grandparents raised him among numerous other children after his parents’ early deaths and that he fled to America after the communist revolution.

According to a 1975 Pittsburgh Press profile, his legal guardian when he started out was Roman Catholic Bishop John Mussio of Steubenville.

Dacal went on to sing leading roles at European opera houses, taught math at area Catholic schools, studied linguistics at the University of Pittsburgh and also worked as a lawyer before retiring.

He said he was a frequent caregiver for his grandchildren while his daughter pursued her medical career but now is only allowed infrequent, supervised visits and cannot attend their school and other activities. He lives in a one-bedroom apartment, said his attorney, Robert Del Greco Jr.

Mr. Del Greco said afterward his client’s crimes were “ irreconcilable with the body of his work, education, sophistication and community service.”

He was arrested in April 2018 after he allegedly sent and tried to solicit obscene images from an undercover police officer who was posing in an online chat site as a 14-year-old boy in December 2017.

The officer, Gary Scherer of North Strabane, said he was contacted by a man who, in the ensuing months, requested nude photos, exposed his own genitals via one-way video and asked crude, sexually explicit questions. Officer Scherer said that after police carried out a search warrant, they confirmed the messages came from Dacal’s computer. 

The Diocese of Pittsburgh suspended Dacal from ministry when he was arrested. With his sentencing completed, that begins a “canonical process” that could also lead to him being laicized, or removed from his status as clergy, according to the Rev. Nicholas Vaskov, spokesman for the diocese.

Deacons are Catholic clergy members who can give homilies and preside at some sacraments but not perform priestly functions such as celebrate Mass. They are subject to U.S. bishops’ 2002 policy banning all clergy from ministry for one or more sexual offenses against minors.

Dacal was not listed in the Aug. 14 statewide grand jury report that accused 301 priests across the state of molesting children over the past seven decades. His case was investigated by a task force separate from those working on the grand jury report, and his arrest took place as the grand jury was finishing its report

Peter Smith: petersmith@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1416; Twitter @PG_PeterSmith.

(Mike Frisch)