Michael R. Sisak and Elizabeth Skrapits, The Citizens’ Voice, Wilkes-Barre, Pa. –
Robert Caravella shook his head left to right and back again Tuesday in Luzerne County Court as his attorney ran through the litany of charges against him.
Did Caravella, 52, sexually assault the two girls living next door? Did he commit aggravated indecent assault? Corruption of minors? Endangering the welfare of children?
“No, I did not,” Caravella said, repeating the answer when confronted with each charge – more than a dozen in all.
According to prosecutors, Caravella sexually abused the girls, now 16 and 11, at homes on North Chestnut Street, Nanticoke and Gould Street, Plymouth between 2002 and 2005. He made them look at pornographic magazines and then forced himself on them, prosecutors said.
“I never touched them,” Caravella told his attorney, Andrew Katsock. “I never inappropriately touched them. Ever.”
Caravella and his wife, Carol Ann Hann, are scheduled to face a separate trial Aug. 6 for abusing their son.
At a preliminary hearing last year, the boy said Caravella introduced him to pornography at age 8 to prepare him for the years of forced sex that would follow with Hann.
The teenager said he’d be given a bath about once a month, brushed his teeth “on occasion” and walked around without clothes on because he didn’t know it was improper.
Police say the Gould Street home, strewn with trash and infested with fleas, exhibited a “nauseating” stench of cat and human urine, along with fecal matter.
“I got used to it,” said the boy, who took the stand wearing a green polo shirt, khaki pants, black shoes and glasses with his short brown hair neatly combed to the side.
Under questioning at his trial Tuesday, Caravella admitted there were times he was the only person in the house with the girls he was accused of abusing. He acknowledged the opportunity existed to molest them. However, he said he would never do that.
Deputy District Attorney Alexis Falvello asked how the girls could describe the things that happened to them. Caravella said they could have got it from the Internet.
When Falvello pressed Caravella for a reason the girls might have made up such “extreme” allegations against him, he said they were angry at his wife.
