A Northampton firefighter is suspended amid charges alleging he had sexual contact with a teenage girl, according to authorities.<\/p>\n
Michael Dempsey Jr., 40, a borough resident, was arraigned Tuesday on felony charges of aggravated indecent assault, corruption of minors and unlawful contact with minors.<\/p>\n
He is free after posting $50,000 bail, according to court records.<\/p>\n
Dempsey assaulted the girl, who was 14 at the time, in a detached garage in the borough in August 2018, according to court documents. She disclosed the incident during a therapy session in 2019, which resulted in a mandated ChildLine report, police said. She reported the alleged incident to police shortly after.<\/p>\n
The girl and her family moved out of state in 2019, and the case remained open, but no additional investigation was done, court documents state. Northampton police Chief Bryan Kadingo in May ordered a review of the investigative file.<\/p>\n
Police contacted the alleged victim in May and asked if she would be willing to participate in the investigation. She said she was not sure why the investigation had not proceeded, but said she remembered the incident \u201clike it happened yesterday,\u201d court documents state. She recounted the incident, which was consistent with what she had said in 2019, police said.<\/p>\n
Northampton police filed charges Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The Northampton Borough Fire Department said in a statement that it is aware of the charges. The department conducts criminal background checks and child-abuse clearance checks of its members, according to the statement. The conduct alleged is \u201cinconsistent with the values and standards\u201d of the department, it said.<\/p>\n
Dempsey is suspended pending further review.\u00a0He is listed in the 2026-2027 roster as a fire captain.<\/p>\n
He did not have an attorney listed for him Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Northampton firefighter is suspended amid charges alleging he had sexual contact with a teenage girl, according to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261326,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,202,182,139,4729,434,28,432],"class_list":["post-264093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-northampton","tag-northampton-county","tag-pennsylvania","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}