Eight years after he was first molested by his JROTC instructor and trusted mentor, a 23-year-old man stood tall in Butler County Court Friday and spoke loud about his experience. “I am a survivor of ... sexual abuse and I am here reading this statement because I want to do everything I can to make sure no other boys have their lives put through the destruction and chaos that this sexual predator can cause,” the man said. Then he sat quietly as his attacker — Sgt. Maj. Kevin Johnson, 54, of Portersville — went to jail for 11 1/2 to 22 1/2 years. “It took an awful lot of courage on your part to participate in this and not run and hide from it,” Judge Timothy McCune told the victim, just prior to fashioning Johnson’s state prison sentence. The victim had been a 15-year-old freshman in the Seneca Valley School District when he joined the JROTC program and encountered Johnson. As the victim and his family grew to trust Johnson, who is a decorated Army man of more than two decades, Johnson’s intentions turned devious and sexual. For 3 1/2 years, Johnson perpetrated an escalating series of sexual assaults on the boy. Charges were filed in February 2008, and he went on trial a year later on Aug. 17, 2009, but that ended in a mistrial. The defense appealed prosecutor’s decision to retry the case, and it took another two years for it to be ready for trial a second time.
