Westmoreland man charged with child sex assaults in Pa.'s Jehovah’s Witnesses probe

A Mt. Pleasant Township man and member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses was arrested Wednesday in connection with sex assault accusations involving two children decades ago in Unity, according to court papers.

Timothy A. Willochell, 54, is accused of molesting the children on separate occasions between 1989 and 1997. The alleged actions did not happen at locations connected to the religious group.

He is charged with aggravated indecent assault, corruption of minors, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and related offenses. At his arraignment Wednesday, bail was set at $170,000 total in two cases.

Willochell was the 17th member of the religious group to be charged with sexual assault offenses by the state attorney general since 2022 as a grand jury has been hearing testimony related to allegations by members of Jehovah’s Witnesses congregations.

“This defendant preyed on two children, waiting for opportunities to assault them when they were alone and at their most vulnerable,” Attorney General Dave Sunday said in a statement. “I commend the victims for their bravery in coming forward, and applaud grand jurors who continue to diligently hear testimony as part of a comprehensive investigation of criminal conduct involving members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses community.”

One of the accusers testified before the grand jury Willochell sexually assaulted her four or five times when she was 5 and 6 years old, according to court papers.

The other accuser said he was sexually assaulted by Willochell twice over a four-year period when he was about 6 to 10 years old, authorities said. He testified before the grand jury he first disclosed the allegations last year.

Willochell did not have an attorney listed in online court records. He was being held at the Westmoreland County Prison. A July 21 preliminary hearing is set.

The ongoing grand jury probe began with a 2019 referral from a county prosecutor who felt the state should take a broader look at the issue.

Locally, trials for Ronald Mangone, 70, of Lower Burrell and Roger Zellars, 69, of Pittsburgh’s Garfield neighborhood are pending, said Brett Hambright, spokesman for the attorney general’s office.

According to a criminal complaint, Mangone’s family was actively involved in the New Kensington Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation and later in the West End French congregation.

Mangone is accused of sexually assaulting a girl in the 1990s when she was between 5 and 8 years old. Trial is tentatively scheduled for October, according to court records.

Zellars is accused of sexually assaulting a girl when she was 9 and 10 years old in the early 1990s, according to court papers. An August nonjury trial is tentatively scheduled.

A Butler County judge in June sentenced Shaun Sheffer, 47, of Harmony to 14 to 34 years in prison for sexually assaulting a child, beginning when the victim was 7, between 1995 and 2000, according to the attorney general’s office.

In March, Marc Brown, 66, of Pittsburgh, was sentenced in Allegheny County Court to 12 to 30 years in state prison for repeated sexual abuse of two children between 2004 and 2006.

Renatta Signorini and Kellen Stepler are TribLive staff writers. Renatta can be reached at rsignorini@triblive.com. Kellen can be reached at kstepler@triblive.com.