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Supervisors approve Back Mountain Regional EMA appointments

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Hughestown Lions visit St. Joseph’s group home

<p>A Pennsylvania handyman accused of serial child rape kept a &#8220;perverse shrine&#8221; in his trailer home &#8212; as many as 1,000 pairs of used girl&#8217;s underwear &#8212; and documented his crimes in hundreds of disturbing, graphic images and writings, authorities said.</p><p>Investigators said William Charles Thomas&#8217; crimes were discovered because he wrote about sex assaults on a piece of plywood that he used in a renovation project.</p><p>Thomas, 58, of Morrisville, was arraigned Tuesday on 51 charges, including five counts of child rape, and was jailed on $750,000 bail. Authorities urged other victims to come forward, saying Thomas wrote about molesting children as young as 3 and as far back as the 1970s.</p><p>&#8220;To be blunt about it, this is a real-life boogeyman,&#8221; Bucks County District Attorney Matthew Weintraub said at a news conference.</p><p>Speaking by video during a brief court appearance, Thomas said he &#8220;never inflicted any pain on a child, nor would I want to.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;I just need somebody to believe that I&#8217;m not the evil, disgusting person that people are making me out to be,&#8221; he said, according to The (Easton) Express-Times.</p><p>Police in the Philadelphia suburbs said they began the investigation when the owner of a trailer Thomas had just renovated found the plywood on which Thomas had written about sexually assaulting two young girls, authorities said.</p><p>Police searched Thomas&#8217;s trailer and found &#8212; in addition to the underwear, drawings and his written accounts &#8212; more than 1,000 images of child pornography, including Polaroid photos with the names of three of the victims listed in court documents &#8220;as well as names of children who have yet to be identified,&#8221; a police affidavit said.</p><p>&#8220;This was a perverse shrine to his criminal conquests. And we are merely scratching the surface of those conquests today,&#8221; Weintraub said.</p><p>Police also searched a shed on another property once owned by Thomas and found more sexually explicit accounts scrawled on the walls, court documents said.</p><p>Thomas told police he had been sexually attracted to children since adolescence, the affidavit said. He said he would occasionally steal girls&#8217; underwear while working as a contractor in customers&#8217; houses. Some of the underwear was found hanging over his bed, court documents said.</p><p>Falls Township Police Lt. Henry Ward called the scene inside Thomas&#8217;s trailer horrific.</p><p>&#8220;Try to come up with your worst scenario and times that by 10. And it&#8217;ll get close to what we saw,&#8221; he said.</p><p>Court documents cite abuse dating at least to the 1990s.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">This Feb. 3, 2017, photo provided by the Bucks County District Attorney's Office shows William Charles Thomas of Morrisville, Pa.  Thomas was arraigned Tuesday, Feb. 7 on 51 charges, including five counts of child rape, and was jailed on $750,000 bail. Authorities urged other victims to come forward, saying Thomas wrote about molesting children as young as 3 and as far back as the 1970s. (Bucks County District Attorney's Office via AP)</div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/web1_AP17038660461433.jpg</photo0><caption0>This Feb. 3, 2017, photo provided by the Bucks County District Attorney's Office shows William Charles Thomas of Morrisville, Pa.  Thomas was arraigned Tuesday, Feb. 7 on 51 charges, including five counts of child rape, and was jailed on $750,000 bail. Authorities urged other victims to come forward, saying Thomas wrote about molesting children as young as 3 and as far back as the 1970s. (Bucks County District Attorney's Office via AP)</caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By MICHAEL RUBINKAM</p><p>Associated Press</p></bylineMeta></div>

DA: Morrisville man charged with 5 counts of child rape a ‘real-life boogeyman’