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Wyoming Area’s Brianna Pizzano’s stellar tennis season ends at 1st round of states

New parking lot, storage facility for Bear Creek Charter

<p>WILKES-BARRE &#8212; A veteran county prosecutor who fought for convictions in some of the last decade&#8217;s most notorious sexual assault and abuse cases is leaving the Luzerne County District Attorney&#8217;s Office for a job as a federal prosecutor in Scranton.</p><p>Jenny Roberts, a Lackawanna County native who led the office&#8217;s special victims unit, said she will begin her job Nov. 28 as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. Her last day will be Nov. 23, she said.</p><p>Moving on from a job she&#8217;s held since 2005 will be emotional, she said.</p><p>&#8220;This job has not only been a job, it&#8217;s been my life,&#8221; Roberts said Friday. &#8220;I&#8217;ve been here for over a decade, and I&#8217;ve always loved my job. I&#8217;ve loved the types of cases I&#8217;ve handled and working with the officers, and it&#8217;s such an important area in the district attorney&#8217;s office.&#8221;</p><p>Roberts, who specialized in child sex abuse, sexual assault, domestic violence and elder abuse cases, said she&#8217;s seen &#8220;some of the most horrific things that anyone can imagine&#8221; in her 11-year stint as a Luzerne County prosecutor, but felt privileged to fight for victims who often struggle to fight for themselves.</p><p>Roberts&#8217; boss for the last five years, District Attorney Stefanie Salavantis, acknowledged Roberts&#8217; departure was &#8220;a major loss.&#8221; Roberts &#8220;fought tooth and nail to help protect some of our most vulnerable citizens,&#8221; Salavantis said, and it will be a challenge to replace her skills, experience, and record inside the courtroom.</p><p>The veteran prosecutor, however, said she never kept track of wins and losses. The number of victims she helped was more important.</p><p>&#8220;To see a victim having just been vindicated and to know that people actually believed what they were saying means so much to them,&#8221; Roberts said.</p><p>Salavantis said it takes &#8220;a special person&#8221; to handle cases involving children, domestic violence victims or the elderly.</p><p>&#8220;That&#8217;s what Jenny was,&#8221; Salavantis said. &#8220;She was an angel to so many people.&#8221;</p><p>Keeping assets like Roberts is a challenge because their salaries often aren&#8217;t enough to cover college and law school debt while providing for their families, Salavantis said, noting full-time assistant district attorneys&#8217; salaries start at $41,000 and part-time prosecutors start at even less.</p><p>County records show Roberts, hired in July 2005, was one of the highest-paid prosecutors in 2016 at a salary of $55,605. She is one of at least six prosecutors to leave the district attorney&#8217;s office this year to work in private law firms or elsewhere, Salavantis said.</p><p>&#8220;Prosecutors come in and get trained. They have trial experience. So it&#8217;s easy to pull them away from us because they can offer them more pay,&#8221; Salavantis said.</p><p>Roberts&#8217; cases have been reassigned and the special victims unit, now consisting of three full-time prosecutors, will likely be restructured, Salavantis said.</p><p>Roberts said she will handle &#8220;more complex cases&#8221; in the Scranton office, where she&#8217;ll join former Luzerne and Lackawanna County prosecutor Michelle Olshefski. Like Roberts, Olshefski worked with the special victims unit in both counties before accepting a federal job.</p><p>Reached Friday, Olshefski said she was &#8220;thrilled&#8221; Roberts was joining the office but was unable to comment further. A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment on the hire Friday.</p><p>Roberts, 40, of Roaring Brook Township, earned her law degree from Villanova University prior to going to work as a litigation assistant at Rosenn Jenkins &amp; Greenwald in Wilkes-Barre and the Blair County District Attorney&#8217;s Office.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Roberts </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/web1_roberts.jpg</photo0><caption0>Roberts </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><subheadMeta>DA: Depature &#8216;great loss to Luzerne County&#8217;</subheadMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Joe Dolinsky</p><p>jdolinsky@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><factboxMeta><p><strong>Courtroom success</strong></p><p>While Jenny Roberts said she prosecuted too many cases to count, the Times Leader archives show she&#8217;s secured several dozen convictions since 2005. Here&#8217;s a look at some of the most notable:</p><p>&#8226; October: Former Wilkes-Barre Police Lt. Gerald Cookus pleads guilty to molesting 8-year-old girl.</p><p>&#8226; September/November 2015: Corey Eckrote and Tracy Ann Gonda are convicted of charges related to the suffocation death of their infant son, Jaxon.</p><p>&#8226; September 2014: Ex-Wyoming Valley West teacher Lauren Harrington-Cooper pleads guilty to having sexual encounters with male students.</p><p>&#8226; June 2014: Rebecca Butler is convicted of taking two girls, ages 4 and 7, to the State Correctional Institution at Retreat knowing they were going to be allegedly molested by convicted murderer Andre Vancliff. Vancliff would later withdraw a guilty plea on his charges in the case and plead no contest.</p><p>&#8226; December 2012: Carol Hann and her husband, Robert Caravella, are convicted of 13 counts of sexual assault and neglect of an 8-year-old boy. Caravalla was separately found guilty of sexually assaulting two girls, then ages 3 and 7.</p><p>&#8226; April 2011: Matthew Hrabousky is convicted of assaulting two girls, beginning when they were between 5 and 8 years old and continuing into their teens. &#8220;Sitting before you is a monster,&#8221; Roberts told a judge during his sentencing.</p><p>&#8226; December 2010: Walter Breymeier is convicted of assaulting his then-2-month-old daughter. The girl suffered 31 rib fractures, two skull fractures, three broken limbs and bleeding on the brain. Roberts at the time called it &#8220;one of the most disturbing cases of physical assault&#8221; she&#8217;d seen.</p></factboxMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Joe Dolinsky at 570-991-6110 or on Twitter @JoeDolinskyTL</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Veteran county prosecutor Jenny Roberts takes federal job