Bucks County DA charges three men in separate child sex abuse cases

The Bucks County District Attorney’s Office announced charges in three cases of child sex abuse on Wednesday. Though the office says the instances are all separate, two of the men charged are alleged to have abused the same boy.

“We’re here to discuss three unrelated cases, but with one terrible thing in common,” District Attorney Matthew D. Weintraub said at a press conference in front of reporters.

The three men charged are David Charles Hoffman, 60, of Bristol Township; Louis Charles Aiello, 57, of Penndel; and John Michael Evans, 40, of Tullytown.

All three face multiple felony counts that range from indecent exposure, to trafficking of minors, to rape.

“This is a call for the public’s help,” said Weintraub. Officials believe there may be many more victims connected to all three men, based on evidence turned up during the investigations, and are asking anyone who may have been abused to contact detectives.

Evans, in particular, had extensive contact with children, having worked as a school bus driver for the Pennsbury and Bristol Township school districts, according to the DA’s office, and may have coached youth sports, as well.

In the criminal complaint filed against him, Evans is alleged to have repeatedly abused two teenage boys, one of whom was his stepson, who reported it to police in December 2019. According to the DA’s office, however, “a police investigation did not uncover evidence sufficient to support criminal charges” at the time, and the authorities did not pursue the case until another victim contacted them.

In June, a second boy who had lived with Evans as a foster child told detectives that he had been abused shortly after moving into Evans’ home in April. According to the unnamed victim’s account in court documents, Evans sexually assaulted him “several times a week, too many times to count,” a situation enabled, in part, by the pandemic lockdown measures that kept people from work, school, or social oversight. The victim alleges that Evans took him to multiple other locations in the county for sex acts involving other adult men.

“I’m sorry they had to suffer this horrific abuse, and I’m sorry the second victim had to suffer because of the issues in the proof in the first victim’s report,” Weintraub said. “That’s a terrible consequence.”

Both Hoffman and Aiello are charged with abusing the same boy. Each was known to the family, though Weintraub said he has seen no evidence they were aware of each other, or that the family was aware of what was happening. Hoffman is alleged to have assaulted the boy repeatedly from the time the victim was 5 years old until he was 17. Aiello allegedly began abusing the same boy when he was 12, and it continued for several more years, according to the charges.

Aiello and Evans are both in jail. As of Wednesday afternoon, Hoffman had been taken for medical care after reporting chest pain, and not yet been arraigned. Docket information, including defense attorneys for the three men, had not yet been entered into the state’s court records.