O’Hara, Leo (Deacon)

In 1987, Deacon Leo O’Hara was charged with sexual offenses and child abuse in Ocean City, Maryland, but the disposition of the case is unclear. He was also investigated for the sexual assault of minors in Anne Arundel County the same year. According to an internal memo from 2004, O’Hara admitted during the investigation to molesting over a hundred children since 1953, but no charges were filed due to the inability to identify specific victims.

In 1995, a man wrote a letter to Cardinal Keeler detailing his sexual abuse by O’Hara in 1978 when he was eleven years old. O’Hara abused him over a year at O’Hara’s apartment before disappearing abruptly. The Archdiocese met with the survivor in response to the letter. In 2002, another man reported O’Hara, known to him as “Brother Pius,” sexually abused him starting in 1976 when he was nine years old. The abuse continued until he was fourteen, and there was an incident when he was sixteen. The survivor disclosed that O’Hara groomed him from his time as a patient at Harbor Hospital, and the abuse included oral rape, attempted anal rape, fondling, and kissing. The survivor later discovered O’Hara also sexually assaulted his younger brother. O’Hara died in January 1994.