What happened to you at Conemaugh, or in Dr. Barto's exam room, was not okay.

Not the doctor. He's in prison, 79 to 158 years, and he isn't getting out. This page is about the health system that gave him hospital privileges for most of four decades, the two Johnstown practices where he saw children, and what more than 140 of his former patients said in a Cambria County lawsuit: that the people around him were told, more than once, and kept booking him. If you were his patient as a kid, at Conemaugh Memorial, at Lee, at Laurel Pediatric Associates or at Johnstown Pediatric Associates, this is for you.

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6 questions. Your answers are private and go to one person.

Your doctor was Johnnie Barto? There is a page about him, too.

This applies to you no matter what

Your parents complained and got a meeting, or a line about him being thorough. It's in the 2019 complaint, almost word for word: a 2007 meeting at Laurel Pediatrics, the parents of a 16-year-old across the table, and the office manager and a nurse practitioner telling them (this is the complaint's account) they'd be singing his praises if he'd found a lump. Keep anything you have from that.
You were never one of the 31 in the criminal case. Most of the people who sued weren't either; over 140 are on the civil docket.
You don't have a lawsuit's worth of memory. One plaintiff in the appeal was an infant and knows only what her mother told her. The court took her case.
It was a hospital visit, not an office visit. The Attorney General's July 2018 charges named Conemaugh Memorial Medical Center as one of the places it happened, with his Richland Township office and the practice's Somerset County office.
You kept going back. Everybody did, because he sat on the school board and went to church and in the 1990s the town actually wore ribbons for him. None of that is on you.
It's a sibling, a son, a daughter, a patient who can't do this themselves. You can start it for them; the last answer to the first question is there for exactly that.

The Conemaugh and Barto record: what the courts and the papers say, and when

None of this is ours. It comes from the Cambria County Court of Common Pleas, the Superior Court of Pennsylvania, the Attorney General's prosecution and the Johnstown reporters who sat through it, and every line links to where we read it. Barto pleaded guilty and no contest; we say that exactly. Everything against Conemaugh and the two practices is what a filed complaint alleges, and Conemaugh has disputed wrongdoing from the first filing to the settlement. On the facilities: the records below name Conemaugh Memorial Medical Center, Laurel Pediatric Associates and Johnstown Pediatric Associates. Lee, the old Lee Hospital and UPMC Lee Regional, is here because the docket names UPMC Lee as a hospital where Barto held privileges and Conemaugh has run it since 2005, not because any record we cite puts an incident there.

1998 to 2000

This goes back further than most people know. In 1998 the Tribune-Democrat reported that three girls, one 3, one 4, one 13, had accused Barto of touching them inappropriately during office visits at Johnstown Pediatrics, 110 Main St., across a span of four years. The complaints went to the state; his license was suspended, and in 2000 the Board of Medicine gave it back, in an order that found the allegations unproved and that his conduct "lacked some propriety and led fairly enough to the charges against him." Tribune-Democrat.

January to July 2018

Arrested January 18, 2018, over a 12-year-old patient examined at Laurel Pediatrics in Richland Township the month before; license suspended January 22. More charges in March and April, and on July 30 the Attorney General announced 69 more, from 29 people, describing incidents back to the early 1990s at his Richland Township office, at Conemaugh Memorial Medical Center and at the practice's Somerset County office. Tribune-Democrat.

December 20, 2018

In the Cambria County Court of Common Pleas, before Judge Patrick Kiniry, Barto pleaded guilty in the two cases brought by family members and no contest in the three cases brought for former patients, charges that included aggravated indecent assault, indecent assault and endangering the welfare of children. No contest means he accepted the punishment without admitting the facts. NBC News / AP.

March 18, 2019

Seventy-nine to 158 years in state prison, for 31 victims, most of them patients, one two weeks old. Prosecuted by the Attorney General; 19 people gave impact statements. Judge Kiniry read from the state assessor's report that the first disclosure came in 1997 and ended in a financial settlement before the license came back, and told him: "You got away with this before and you didn't stop." Tribune-Democrat.

May 14, 2019

Five former patients, four women and one man, filed the first civil complaint in Cambria County against Barto, Laurel Pediatrics and Conemaugh Health System: negligent hiring and retention, negligent supervision, misrepresentation, civil conspiracy. It says both defendants were "actually aware of the serious nature of the allegations" and "through silence, acquiescence, denial and misrepresentation" failed to act. Conemaugh answered that Barto was an independent physician it never employed and disputed any wrongdoing. That complaint became the master complaint on docket No. 2019-2172. Tribune-Democrat.

April 16, 2021

President Judge Norman Krumenacker refused to throw the cases out. By then 45 plaintiffs were on the docket. He overruled the objections of Conemaugh Valley Memorial Hospital, Conemaugh Memorial Medical Center and Duke LifePoint Healthcare on every count pleaded against them, negligent hiring, negligent supervision, civil conspiracy, corporate negligence and the rest, and declined to strike the demand for punitive damages. Tribune-Democrat.

May 21, 2026

Conemaugh Memorial Medical Center announced that it and its co-defendants had reached a settlement agreement with the plaintiffs; its statement said the agreement "supports Dr. Barto's victims." Terms not released, plaintiffs' lawyers didn't comment, and nothing published says how many plaintiffs it covers. It settles the people who sued. It does not settle anyone who didn't. Tribune-Democrat.

May 26, 2026

Five days later the Superior Court of Pennsylvania published DLP Conemaugh Memorial Medical Center v. Jane BR1 Doe, 2026 PA Super 107. It recites the docket's history: five plaintiffs in May 2019, "over 140" by the appeal, Barto's guilty and no contest pleas, his co-ownership of Johnstown Pediatric Associates from 1977 to 2000 and Laurel Pediatric Associates from 2000 to 2017, his privileges at Conemaugh Memorial, UPMC Lee Regional and DLP. It says the ultimate legal question in every case is the same: "whether the defendants knew or should have known about Barto's alleged conduct." Then it undid the order to try four cases together and sent them back. Procedural, not a decision on the merits. Superior Court opinion (PDF).

We checked this on September 13, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from May 26, 2026. When something new gets filed or decided, it goes in here within 72 hours, with the link.

Who can be held responsible in a Conemaugh lawsuit

The health system, first. Barto was never a Conemaugh employee, and Conemaugh says so every time it's asked. The complaint says something narrower and harder to wave off: a hospital decides who gets privileges and who keeps them. Conemaugh Memorial gave Barto privileges, kept them after the 1998 accusations, kept them through the Board of Medicine suspension and the 2000 order that gave his license back, and kept them until his arrest in 2018. That is the corporate negligence count, the one the trial court refused to dismiss in 2021. The named defendants are DLP Conemaugh Memorial Medical Center, LLC, doing business as Conemaugh Health System and Conemaugh Memorial Medical Center Lee Campus; DLP Healthcare, LLC, doing business as Duke LifePoint Healthcare; and Conemaugh Valley Memorial Hospital, the nonprofit that owned Memorial until Duke LifePoint paid $536 million for the system on September 2, 2014. The nonprofit is on the docket for the years before that date, the buyer for the years after.

Then the two practices Barto co-owned, Johnstown Pediatric Associates from 1977 to 2000 and Laurel Pediatric Associates from 2000 to 2017. Separate companies, not Conemaugh's, and where most of the pleaded knowledge sits: the 2007 meeting where, the complaint says, a nurse practitioner and the office manager brushed off a 16-year-old's parents, and the 2016 conversation in which another Laurel pediatrician, it says, confirmed she'd been told before and promised to speak to him about his "odd bedside manner." UPMC Lee Regional is a defendant too, for the years before Conemaugh took Lee over in 2005. None of it has been decided by a jury. The defendants settled the cases that were filed and admitted nothing.

Conemaugh is not small. By its own description it's the largest health provider in west central Pennsylvania (about 3,200 staff, more than 450 physicians) and it belongs to LifePoint Health. It is also private, which matters more than people expect: no government cap stands between a patient and a verdict here, and in 2021 the judge refused to strike the demand for punitive damages. Its insurers won a ruling in 2023 that they owed it nothing for the Barto cases. It settled anyway. That tells you who pays.

Your deadline: Pennsylvania's statute of limitations, and the birthday that decides it

Under 18 when it happened, and born in December 1989 or later? Then Pennsylvania gives you until your 55th birthday. Who does that cover here? Nearly everyone from Laurel Pediatric Associates, 2000 to 2017, and the younger Johnstown Pediatric Associates kids from the 1990s. There is time, real time, since the oldest person inside the rule doesn't turn 55 until 2044. Not infinite time, though, and the settlement started no clock; it just took the people who'd already sued. If you want to look the rule up, it's Act 87 of 2019, sitting today at 42 Pa.C.S. § 5533(b)(2), and the way it's written is 37 years from the day you turn 18.

Now the hard part, said plainly. Act 87 took effect November 26, 2019, and by its own terms it reached only claims still alive that day. Under the law before it, a childhood claim died at 30. So if you had already turned 30 by November 26, 2019, roughly anyone born before December 1989, Pennsylvania closed your claim before the new law arrived, and the new law did not reopen it. That is where the first Barto accusers from 1998 stand. Right now there is no route in Pennsylvania for that group, and no repressed-memory exception to lean on. Harrisburg has bills to open a window; the House passed one in June 2025 and the Senate has sat on it since. Nothing has passed, and we won't tell you one is coming.

Two more things. If you were 18 or older at the time, the rule is different and shorter, and a lawyer has to look. And the birthday math runs to the day, so if you're close to the line, or not sure, answer the questions and let someone who does this for a living check it. Guessing you're too late is the one mistake that can't be fixed.

Your situation still qualifies even if

You never said it to anyone. Not your parents, not a spouse. Most of the 140-plus plaintiffs carried it for years first.
Your parents did say something, and were told he was just being thorough. The complaint says that happened to other families too.
You honestly don't know whether it was an exam or something else. That doubt is what the whole thing was built on; one plaintiff was an infant in for an earache.
You're a man. The charges and the complaints include boys.
You were a baby and know it only from a parent. So was one of the four plaintiffs in the Superior Court appeal.
You moved away, to Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio or farther. The court is in Cambria County; you don't have to be.

Facilities covered

Conemaugh Memorial Medical Center, 1086 Franklin Street, Johnstown, where Barto held privileges and where the 2018 charges say some of it happened · Conemaugh Memorial Medical Center Lee Campus, 320 Main Street, the former Lee Hospital and UPMC Lee Regional, Conemaugh's since 2005 and on the docket as UPMC Lee for the years before · Laurel Pediatric Associates, Richland Township, and its Somerset County office, 2000 to 2017 · Johnstown Pediatric Associates, 110 Main Street, 1977 to 2000. The two practices were Barto's own companies, co-defendants on the same docket, not Conemaugh's. The page about Dr. Barto himself is at /dr-johnnie-barto; this one is about the places. Not sure which office or hospital? Answer the questions and say so.

Questions people are asking

Can I still sue Conemaugh over Dr. Barto after the settlement?

The May 2026 settlement resolved the people who had already sued, more than 140 of them, on terms nobody has published. It didn't change the law and it can't sign away a claim for someone who wasn't a party. Whether you have one comes down mostly to your birthday and your age at the time, which is what the questions above sort out.

Is Dr. Barto still in prison?

Yes. The civil cases were never about him paying; they named the hospital system and the practices, which are still open, while he sits on a 79-to-158-year state sentence handed down March 18, 2019 that his lawyer said he wouldn't appeal.

How much does a sexual abuse lawyer cost?

Here, nothing. Every case is on contingency. The lawyer is paid only out of what is recovered, and if nothing is recovered you owe nothing. The call costs nothing, so does the review, and so does the case if it goes nowhere.

Pennsylvania's statute of limitations for child sexual abuse: what is it, and am I inside it?

Until you turn 55, if Act 87 of 2019 reaches you. The catch: it took effect November 26, 2019 and reached only claims still alive that day, and the old rule ended a claim at 30. So it comes down to birthdays. Born about December 1989 or later, you're inside. Earlier, and Pennsylvania has no window for you today. The House voted for one in June 2025; the Senate hasn't.

Barto was never my doctor at the hospital, only at his office. Does Conemaugh still matter?

Tell us where it was; the first question is written for that. Laurel Pediatric Associates and Johnstown Pediatric Associates are defendants in their own right on the same docket. Conemaugh is on it for the privileges it granted and kept. Which defendants belong in your case is a lawyer's call, not a reason to hold back.

Who sees your form

Kerim Eravci · Survivor Advocate · Not a lawyer

I was a victim, and I waited. Not because I didn't know what happened to me (I knew every day), but because I'd decided it was over, mine to carry, nobody's business. When I finally went looking for a lawyer, the answer came back in two words I'd never thought about: statute of limitations. My time had run out while I was busy getting through it.

What that has cost me since is a long story, and I'll tell you the whole thing in private, if you want it. The short version is the reason my name is on this page: I'm here to help people do what I wish I'd done, which is find out where you stand while the door's still open.

I'm not a lawyer. I read what you send, I call you once, on your terms, and nothing gets filed unless you say so. Ask sooner than I did.

Kerim Eravci is not an attorney. He's a survivor.

What happens next. Three steps, nothing more until you say so.

You answer 6 questions. Nothing is filed. Nothing starts.
A survivor calls you, once. Not a robot, not a call center. Someone who has been where you are.
You decide. You find out your options. If you want to stop there, you stop there.

How this works

ME2 Survivors Alliance protects the heart. Licensed Pennsylvania attorneys do the legal work. We are not lawyers and we don't pretend to be.

You never pay a dollar

Every case is on contingency. There is no charge for the call, the review, or the case. The firm is paid only out of a recovery, and if there is no recovery you owe nothing.