In the late 2000s, former Scranton Police Officer Stephen Carroll’s West Mountain home was a go-to drinking spot for a group of high school boys.
During the second day of Carroll’s trial in Lackawanna County Court on charges of inappropriate conduct with students he met as West Scranton High School’s school resource officer, several men now in their 30s testified Tuesday to time spent nearly two decades ago at a home one of them called “the tavern.”
One recalled shots mixed with Frangelico and sitting down to watch the movie “Jackass” in Carroll’s living room. Another remembered smoking marijuana Carroll confiscated at school.
Others had darker memories. One man said he woke to Carroll groping him while another said his pants and underwear had suspiciously shifted in his sleep, making him think he had been taken advantage of in the night.
Carroll, 50, of Scranton, was arrested by the state attorney general’s office in 2025, more than a decade after a man first reported Carroll touched him inappropriately, according to testimony disclosed Tuesday. State prosecutors said that Carroll sexually assaulted the victims and even drugged some of them.
He was charged with unlawful contact with minors, rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, sexual assault and other offenses.
Testimony in the trial began Monday. Judge Michael J. Barrasse is presiding.
Carroll’s attorneys have not disputed that Carroll drank with the now grown men nearly 20 years ago, but took aim at allegations Carroll had been sexually inappropriate by calling out discrepancies in statements the witnesses gave to police during interviews in 2014, 2018 and last year — often over details, like where they slept while at Carroll’s house.
“In the moment I guess I didn’t realize how important it was that I specify if it was a couch or recliner,” one of the victims said while being questioned by Jason Shrive, one of Carroll’s attorneys.
Newswatch 16 does not identify victims of alleged sexual abuse. Carroll is not related to city Police Chief Thomas Carroll.
Carroll was removed from his role as a school resource officer in 2018 and has not been a police officer since 2022.
Carroll woke him up
The man on the witness stand told the jury he had only recently left high school when he stopped by Carroll’s house in September 2014 for a few drinks.
The witness had work at 4 a.m. the next day, so he couldn’t drink all night. Feeling drowsy, he fell asleep on Carroll’s recliner sometime between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m., he testified.
In the predawn dark, he woke to Carroll groping his genitals over his pants, he testified. Rage and fear surged through him. He bolted up and started to leave the house. Carroll grabbed his shirt collar and tore it he said, but did not protest further.
While walking, he felt himself “starting to fade,” he testified. This felt off. He’d only had a few drinks, and he was a seasoned drinker. The thought that he had been drugged crossed his mind as his consciousness faded.
When next he woke, he was in a stranger’s car parked in front of their house a few blocks away. That stranger, James Tutino, testified that he woke to the man knocking on his door.
Tutino testified he drove the young man home that morning and added that he had the sense something “terribly wrong” had happened to him. Tutino noticed, he said, the man’s shirt had been torn.
Hours after leaving Carroll’s house, the witness went to the emergency department at Geisinger Community Medical Center, where the attending physician, Dr. Steven Brunetti, testified that the patient underwent a drug screen.
The test found traces of benzodiazepines and marijuana. Under questioning from Shrive, the witness acknowledged that he had a pill problem at the time but he denied taking drugs that night.
Brunetti testified he remembered that his patient said a “man tried to a touch my junk” and that his assailant was a Scranton police officer.
Strange conversation
Toward the end of another witness’s senior year of high school, he spent a night drinking with Carroll, he testified.
It wasn’t unusual. He considered Carroll a friend and had been to his house before. Pictures of the two, including one in which the smiling 17-year-old witness sat on Carroll’s lap at school, flashed on a projection screen for the jury.
Still, he testified there were occasions when Carroll made him feel uncomfortable, like when the police officer would “check” on him while he was in the bathroom during nights at Carroll’s home.
On this night nearly 20 years ago, at the end of the witness’s time at West Scranton High School, he felt himself blacking out at Carroll’s kitchen table after three or four beers.
When he came to his senses again, it was morning and he found himself on Carroll’s couch.
His pants and underpants, however, felt odd. They were twisted in opposite directions.
He assumed he had too much to drink the night before and went back home.
A conversation later on changed that opinion.
In college, he returned home to attend his grandfather’s funeral and stopped by Carroll’s house during the visit. The two shared a “deep” conversation about the worries Carroll carried, the man testified.
Then the conversation took a sharp “right turn” when Carroll chided the witness about the size of his genitals and gestured his hands as if in measurement.
The strange comments reframed the earlier memory of waking up on Carroll’s couch with askew pants in a more disturbing light: had Carroll taken “advantage of me?”
Under cross-examination by Shrive, the witness clarified that Carroll had not described his genitals by pointing out unique feature, like a birth mark or a tattoo.
Testimony will resume Wednesday at 9 a.m.