If you were a patient of Dr. Johnnie Barto as a kid, we believe you.

He was a Johnstown pediatrician for forty-one years. Accusations in 1998; the state medical board cleared him in 2000; and then, in January 2018, a 12-year-old told her mother what happened at the end of a visit, and this time he was arrested. He's in state prison now. Seventy-nine to 158 years, which is a way of saying he isn't coming out. This page is for the people who sat on his exam table as children, at Laurel Pediatric Associates, at Johnstown Pediatric Associates, at Conemaugh Memorial or Lee. It says, plainly, what the record is and who in Pennsylvania still has a legal route today.

Free
Confidential
No obligation
You never pay a dollar

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

Your visits were at Conemaugh, Laurel Pediatrics or Johnstown Pediatrics? There is a page about the places, too.

This applies to you no matter what

You weren't one of the 31. Most people weren't. The Attorney General said at sentencing that at least a half-dozen more cases couldn't be charged because the criminal clock had run, and more than 140 former patients later sued in Cambria County.
You thought it was part of the exam. That was the method. Investigators found he waited for parents to step out, or used his own body to block their view, or said it was standard. One girl came in for the flu.
It was one visit. One of the impact statements read in court was from a woman who saw him exactly once, at five, because of "the luck of the draw of physicians in his office."
You were a baby and only know it from a parent. One of the four plaintiffs in the 2026 Superior Court appeal was an infant in for an earache and has no memory of it herself. Her case is on the docket like everyone else's.
Your parents complained and got a speech about how thorough he was. There's a 2007 meeting at Laurel Pediatrics in a 2019 complaint that went, word for word almost, like that.
You're not the patient. You're the parent, or the spouse, or the sister, asking for someone who can't do this yet, and the first question has a button for you.

Dr. Johnnie Barto: what the record says, and when

None of what follows is ours. It's the Pennsylvania Attorney General, the Cambria County Court of Common Pleas, the Superior Court of Pennsylvania, the Department of Corrections and the reporters who sat in the courtroom, and every line links to where we read it. Barto pleaded guilty in the two cases brought by family members and no contest in the three brought for former patients; we say it exactly that way, because no contest means he took the sentence without admitting the facts. Everything about the hospitals and the practices is what a filed complaint alleges, and they have admitted nothing.

The 1990s to 2000

The first accusations surfaced in the late 1990s, and Johnstown, by and large, stood with him; at a high school football game supporters handed out ribbons while he fought the charges. The Pennsylvania Board of Medicine took up administrative charges in 2000, that he had molested two young girls, and threw the case out, calling the allegations "incongruous to his reputation." He kept practicing, and years later, talking to investigators, he said that ruling had made him feel "invincible." Courthouse News / AP.

January to July 2018

A 12-year-old girl left an office visit in January 2018 and told her mother what he'd done at the end of it, and that was that; he was arrested, at 70. Two young relatives came next, charges in March and April. Then July 30, when the Attorney General's office announced charges involving 29 more children going back to the 1980s (involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and aggravated indecent assault, both first-degree felonies, plus indecent assault and endangering the welfare of children), and mentioned, almost in passing, that in 1997 a patient's mother, herself a doctor, had confronted him and he'd promised never to see a teenage girl alone again. Most were 8 to 12. One was two weeks old. "The vast majority" happened in an exam room at Laurel Pediatric Associates of Cambria County, "several" at local hospitals in the county. PA Attorney General, July 30, 2018 (archived).

December 20, 2018

Barto pleaded guilty, in the Cambria County courthouse in Ebensburg, to sexually abusing two family members, and then under questioning he admitted assaulting more than two dozen of his patients, a number the Attorney General's office put at 31 children in all: most between 8 and 12, one just two weeks old, in the exam room at Laurel Pediatric Associates and at local hospitals. Aggravated indecent assault and endangering the welfare of children were among the counts. NBC News / AP.

March 18, 2019

Judge Patrick Kiniry gave him 79 to 158 years in state prison, well past the 31 to 62 prosecutors had asked for. Nineteen people gave impact statements, his wife among them. The AP put the pleas precisely: guilty in December to abusing two family members, and no contest to the charges involving his patients, "refusing to admit guilt but accepting the punishment." Kiniry, to the room: "the justice system is not perfect, but it worked the second time." His lawyer said there would be no appeal. Courthouse News / AP.

May 14, 2019

There's a 2007 meeting at Laurel Pediatrics in this complaint, where a parent complained and, the complaint says, got praise for how thorough he was. That's the flavor of it. The defendants, it alleges, were "actually aware" of the accusations, and what came back was "silence, acquiescence, denial." Five former patients filed it, four women and a man; the defendants were Barto, Conemaugh Health System and Laurel Pediatrics; the counts, for the record, negligence, misrepresentation, intentional infliction of emotional distress and civil conspiracy. Everyone who sued afterward in Cambria County joined this filing as the master complaint, docket No. 2019-2172, and the docket kept growing. Tribune-Democrat.

May 20, 2026

A settlement, announced by Conemaugh Memorial Medical Center on behalf of itself and its co-defendants, with the plaintiffs on that docket. No terms were released. What the hospital did say was that Barto's actions "eroded the trust of his patients, their families and our community" and that the agreement "supports Dr. Barto's victims." It settled the people who had sued. It did not settle anyone who hadn't. WJAC.

May 26, 2026

Six days later the Superior Court of Pennsylvania published its opinion in the same case, 2026 PA Super 107. It recites the history in a paragraph: five plaintiffs in 2019, "over 140" by the appeal, Barto's guilty plea as to family members and nolo contendere plea as to minor patients, 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 undid an order to try four cases together and sent them back. Procedural, not a ruling on who knew what. 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 answers for what Dr. Barto did

Not him, in any way that matters. He's 78, at SCI Waymart, and the Department of Corrections locator still lists him there this month; the state took his license and his freedom and there's nothing left to take. A civil case about a doctor who is in prison for life was never about the doctor. It's about the people who put children in the room with him and kept doing it. That is what the 140-plus plaintiffs in Cambria County said, and it's what a lawyer looks at first.

Three kinds of defendant were on that docket. The two practices he co-owned: Johnstown Pediatric Associates, 1977 to 2000, and Laurel Pediatric Associates, 2000 to 2017, where the Attorney General says the vast majority of the assaults happened. The hospitals that gave him privileges: Conemaugh Memorial Medical Center and the Duke LifePoint companies that own it, Conemaugh Valley Memorial Hospital for the years before the 2014 sale, and UPMC Lee for the old Lee Hospital. The theory against each is different, and a filed complaint is all it is: negligent hiring and supervision against the practices, corporate negligence against the hospitals for granting privileges and keeping them after 1998. Conemaugh has said from the start that Barto was an independent physician it never employed, and disputes any wrongdoing. The trial judge let every count go forward in April 2021, the punitive damages demand included. No jury ever decided any of it; the filed cases settled in May 2026 with nothing admitted.

The page about the places, who owned what and when, is at /conemaugh-health-system-survivors. This page is about him, and about the one question that decides almost everything for his patients in Pennsylvania: your birthday.

Your deadline: the Pennsylvania 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. Think about what that covers for Barto's patients: every year of Laurel Pediatric Associates, 2000 to 2017, and the younger kids at Johnstown Pediatric Associates in the 1990s too. The oldest of them won't be 55 until late 2044. There's time, in other words, and the May 2026 settlement didn't start a clock or close a door for you; it resolved the people who'd already sued, nobody else. If you want to look the law up, it's Act 87 of 2019, now at 42 Pa.C.S. § 5533(b)(2), and the whole rule boils down to 37 years from your 18th birthday, police report or no police report.

Now the part nobody likes to say. Act 87 started on November 26, 2019, and it says, in its own text, that it reaches only the claims that hadn't already died by that day. Under the law before it, a childhood claim ended at 30. So if you had already turned 30 by November 26, 2019, which is 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 girls from 1984 and 1994 who spoke at sentencing stand, and the three from the 1998 complaint. Right now there is no route in Pennsylvania for that group. No back door either: the state Supreme Court said in 1997 that a memory coming back doesn't restart the clock. There is a bill in Harrisburg that would open a two-year window, and the House passed it in June 2025, and the Senate has sat on it ever since. Nothing has passed. We won't tell you one is coming.

Two more things. If you were 18 or older at the time, the rules are different and shorter, and a lawyer has to look. And the birthday math is to the day, so if you're close to the line, or you're not sure, answer the questions and let someone who does this for a living check it rather than guessing. Deciding on your own that the door is closed: that's the one mistake nobody can undo for you.

Your situation still qualifies even if

You never told anyone. Not a parent, not a spouse, nobody. Most of the 31 carried it for twenty years first.
Your parents did say something, and were told he was just being thorough. The 2019 complaint says that happened to other families too.
You honestly don't know whether it was an exam or something else. That doubt was the design. The Attorney General's own words: he "claimed the assaults were part of a standard medical exam."
You're a man. The charges include boys, and one of the first five civil plaintiffs was a man.
You moved away, to Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio or farther. The court is in Cambria County; you don't have to be.
You still live in Johnstown and everyone knew him. He was on the school board. That's exactly why so many people waited.

Where he was

Johnstown Pediatric Associates, Johnstown, which he co-owned from 1977 to 2000 · Laurel Pediatric Associates, Richland Township, and its Somerset County office, co-owned 2000 to 2017, where the Attorney General says most of it happened · Conemaugh Memorial Medical Center, Johnstown, where he held privileges and where the 2018 charges say some assaults occurred · Lee Hospital, later UPMC Lee Regional, now Conemaugh's Lee Campus, another privileges hospital named on the civil docket. The page about the hospitals and the practices as defendants is at /conemaugh-health-system-survivors. Saw him somewhere else, at a school physical, at his home, at an office you can't place? Say so in the first question and we'll sort it out on the call.

Questions people are asking

He was never charged for what happened to me. Does that matter?

Not for a civil case. The Attorney General charged 31 children and said at least a half-dozen more couldn't be charged at all because of the criminal deadline; the civil docket has more than 140 plaintiffs. The civil claims are about what the practices and hospitals knew and did, not about whether your name was in the criminal file.

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. Not for the call, not for the review, not for the case.

Can I still sue over Dr. Barto after the 2026 settlement?

The settlement resolved the more than 140 people who had already sued on docket 2019-2172, on terms nobody has published. It didn't change the law and it can't release 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, and those are the questions above.

What is the Pennsylvania statute of limitations for child sexual abuse, and does it reach me?

Until you turn 55, if Act 87 of 2019 reaches you. It took effect November 26, 2019 and reached only claims still alive that day, and the old rule ended a claim at 30. So: born about December 1989 or later, you're inside. Earlier, and Pennsylvania has no route for you today; the House voted for a window in June 2025 and the Senate hasn't. A lawyer checks the exact dates, not a webpage.

Is Dr. Barto still in prison?

Yes, and he will be. The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections has him at SCI Waymart, Wayne County, inmate number NU4531, as of this month; he's 78, his minimum is 79 years, and his lawyer said there'd be no appeal. The court also classified him a sexually violent predator, so he's a lifetime registrant on top of it.

Who is Dr. Johnnie Barto, and what did he plead to?

The pediatrician this whole page is about. He practiced in Johnstown for roughly forty years (born 1947), co-owned Johnstown Pediatric Associates and then Laurel Pediatric Associates, held privileges at Conemaugh Memorial and Lee, and pleaded guilty in the two family-member cases and no contest in the three about former patients. He is serving 79 to 158 years for assaults on 31 children, most of them his patients. The dates, the judge and the sources are all in the record section above.

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.