Testimony concluded Wednesday in sex abuse trial of former Scranton Police Officer Stephen Carroll. 

Closing arguments are scheduled to begin when court resumes just after 9 a.m. Thursday. Lackawanna County Judge Michael J. Barrasse is expected give the jury the case soon after.

Carroll, 50, of Scranton, has been on trial these week on charges he sexually abused boys he met while working as a school resource officer for West Scranton High School in the late 2000s and 2010s.

Trooper Robert McGrath, of the state police’s public corruption unit, testified the investigation into Carroll turned up five victims, some of whom first disclosed their abuse more than a decade ago.

McGrath said in court that the county district attorney’s office declined to bring charges based on an earlier state police investigation that lasted from 2018 and 2021. That wasn’t the end of it, however. The state attorney general’s office arrested Carroll last year after bringing the case to a statewide investigating grand jury in 2024.

Carroll is charged with rape, unlawful contact with minors, sexual assault and other offenses. 

Carroll, who is not related to city Police Chief Thomas Carroll, became a police officer in 2000. He was removed as a school resource officer in 2018 and left the department in 2022.

Since Monday, several men — now in their 30s — testified that they drank alcohol at Carroll’s West Mountain home while they were still in high school.

Four of those men testified that Carroll had sexual contact with them years ago, including one man who testified Wednesday that Carroll performed a sex act on him inside an office at the high school while Carroll was in uniform with his service gun on his hip. 

The fifth victim told jurors that he suspected Carroll had molested him while he was passed out on the police officer’s couch.

Newswatch 16 does not identify victims of alleged sexual abuse.

Carroll’s attorneys have repeatedly pointed to discrepancies in the statements the men have given to the police during multiple interviews during the 2010s and this decade.

In her opening statement, defense attorney Jillian Kochis asked jurors to question the reliability of the state’s witnesses, several of whom acknowledged that they had hired attorneys to pursue Carroll in civil lawsuits.

Prosecutors, however, called Dr. Veronique Valliere, a clinical psychologist, to the witness stand to explain to jurors how trauma muddles a person’s memories, how shame keeps victims quiet and how perpetrators can groom their victims to accept the abuse.

Valliere did not know details of the case and spoke generally about how sex abuse victims react to the harm. 

“Disclosure is not an event,” she said. “It’s a process.”