Convicted Perry County child rapist must be resentenced, Pa. court rules

A Perry County man who is serving a 32- to 64-year prison sentence for repeatedly raping a child must be resentenced, a state Superior Court panel has ruled.

The state judges did find that Robert W. Hartnett Jr.’s multiple child-sex convictions are based on solid evidence, however.

The only issue triggering the resentencing order was whether county President Judge Kenneth A. Mummah correctly merged some of the sentences on those multiple counts of child rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a child, unlawful contact with a minor, sexual assault, aggravated indecent assault, corruption of minors and indecent assault.

The Superior Court decision penned by Judge Mariah McLaughlin doesn’t bar Mummah from reimposing the same sentence when the case goes back to county court.

A county jury convicted Hartnett, 53, of Elliottsburg, after a trial in July 2019.

As McLaughlin noted, Hartnett’s accuser, who was then 17, testified that he had started molesting her when she was 8 or 9 and that the abuse had gone on for years. The girl didn’t report the molestation until 2018. Several other witnesses testified that they saw Hartnett have inappropriate physical contact with and make sexual remarks to the victim.

Hartnett claimed in his appeal that the evidence didn’t support his convictions. He insisted that Mummah should have allowed the defense to show the jurors a photograph of the victim sticking out her tongue next to the drawing of a penis. Prosecutors said that photo irrelevant to the case because it was taken after the molestations occurred, McLaughlin wrote.

McLaughlin rejected Hartnett’s assertions that the victim’s testimony wasn’t credible because she couldn’t give exact times when the abuse happened and because she waited years before reporting it. The girl’s testimony that Hartnett had raped her five to ten times was enough to support his convictions, the state judge found.

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