{"id":1022359,"date":"2024-04-19T10:30:16","date_gmt":"2024-04-19T17:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/?p=1022359"},"modified":"2026-10-06T01:56:41","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T08:56:41","slug":"pennsylvania-cop-allegedly-raped-13-month-old","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/ar\/2024\/04\/19\/%d9%88%d9%8a%d8%b8%d9%84-%d8%b6%d8%a7%d8%a8%d8%b7-%d8%b3%d8%a7%d8%a8%d9%82-%d9%81%d9%8a-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b3%d9%81%d9%8a%d9%86%d8%a9-steven-cugini%d8%8c-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%85%d8%aa%d9%87%d9%85\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-York Officer Steven Cugini, Charged in a Toddler&#8217;s Abuse, Stays Free on Bond While the Case Waits for a Jury"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The badge came off in a weekend. The trial did not. Steven Kyle Cugini was a probationary officer with the York City Police Department, sworn in during January 2023 after a stint at the York County 911 center and service as a corporal in the Pennsylvania Army National Guard. On April 16, 2024, Pennsylvania State Police at Lykens charged him with rape of a child, aggravated indecent assault of a child, and aggravated assault. By the following Friday he had resigned, while the department was already moving to fire him. ABC27 reported on August 7, 2026, that the felony case was set for trial on January 25, 2027. That is nearly three years after a daycare worker looked at a 13-month-old girl and called for help.<\/p>\n<p>The investigation started at a YMCA daycare in Halifax Township, Dauphin County, on the morning of April 15, 2024. Staff saw bruising and marks on the child and contacted troopers. The girl was taken by ambulance to Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. Doctors, the Dauphin County child-abuse team, and state police reviewed the injuries together. Charging documents described a fractured tibia and fibula in the left leg, deep bruising, and findings investigators said were consistent with sexual violence. The alleged abuse was placed between about April 11 and April 15, at a home in Elizabethville in Dauphin County and at an address in Springettsbury Township in York County. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.psp.pa.gov\/PIRRs\/Lykens%20Press%20Releases\/H_LYKN_16APR2024_1745.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">state police release<\/a> named Cugini, then 28, of Springettsbury Township, as the man accused.<\/p>\n<div class=\"embed-x\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">A former York City Police officer accused of raping a toddler is scheduled to go to trial early next year.<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/UmP0xafn83\">https:\/\/t.co\/UmP0xafn83<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; abc27 News (@abc27News) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/abc27News\/status\/2085901082627117419?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">August 8, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.x.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/div>\n<\/p>\n<p>The child&#8217;s mother, Brianna Rebekah Shoeman, then 26, of Elizabethville, was Cugini&#8217;s girlfriend. Court papers said the relationship was about four months old. She first offered explanations investigators later called implausible, including an account that the baby had fallen during a bath. In an interview on the evening of April 15 she moved off that story. According to the complaint, she said she had heard her child screaming inside a locked bathroom with Cugini. She also told police she had left the girl with him over prior months, had seen bruises and scrapes, and had accepted his claim that the family dog was responsible. She did not take the child for medical care. In August 2024, state police charged her with felony endangering the welfare of a child for that failure. ABC27 reported in August 2026 that her plea date was September 3. News reports that followed did not publish a result of that hearing, so her case should be treated as a scheduled plea rather than a known sentence.<\/p>\n<p>Cugini&#8217;s own statements, as troopers described them, shifted. He first downplayed any role in the child&#8217;s care, then said he had changed diapers and bathed her, then described an &#8220;accident&#8221; in the bathroom. At the preliminary hearing, an investigator testified that Cugini said, with what the officer called a look of defeat, &#8220;I did not sexually assault this child.&#8221; The quote is a denial, and it belongs in the record as a denial. He has pleaded not guilty. He is presumed innocent. The charges are accusations a Dauphin County jury has not yet heard.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Former officer&amp;apos;s search history revealed in hearing regarding abuse, rape of baby\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zB0_Io7DYEY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>What the preliminary hearing did establish, on May 29, 2024, was that a district judge found enough evidence to hold the case for trial. Magisterial District Judge Rebecca Margerum heard from Dr. Lori Frasier, a pediatric child-abuse specialist at Hershey, who described bruising, an abrasion on the chest, and the broken lower bones of the left leg, and who said the pattern fit abuse rather than the household accidents that had been offered. A state police investigator described material from Cugini&#8217;s phone, including searches and a text exchange the trooper characterized as coaching the mother on what to say. Bail had been set at $200,000. He was booked into Dauphin County Prison, then released. The York Dispatch reported he remained free on that bail while the case moved into the court of common pleas.<\/p>\n<p>York City Police Commissioner Michael Muldrow did not wait for a verdict to act inside his own department. He suspended Cugini immediately, and the suspension was unpaid within a day. Cugini was still probationary, which meant the city did not have to run a years-long civil-service fight to remove him. Muldrow said publicly that he would advocate for his officers and that he also held them to a standard that did not bend where children were concerned. Cugini resigned on April 19, 2024, the day after the city started the termination process, rather than wait to be fired. Resignation kept a discharge line off one form. It did not keep the criminal docket off the internet. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yorkdispatch.com\/story\/news\/crime\/2024\/04\/22\/york-city-officer-resigns-free-on-bail-while-charged-in-child-sex-and-physical-abuse-case\/73418751007\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The York Dispatch<\/a> noted he had not, at that point, been charged in York County even though one of the alleged locations was his township. The Dauphin County case carried the felonies.<\/p>\n<div class=\"embed-x\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The world seriously bums me out sometime. \ud83d\ude2d<\/p>\n<p>Steven Kyle Cugini is a former York City Police Department officer in Pennsylvania<\/p>\n<p>The Pennsylvania State Police launched an investigation after a daycare worker noticed severe bruising on the infant. <\/p>\n<p>Medical evaluations at the\u2026 <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/dk2dqVTzDd\">pic.twitter.com\/dk2dqVTzDd<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Societies Worst Offenders (@WorstOffenders) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/WorstOffenders\/status\/2076422755914825943?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">July 12, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.x.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/div>\n<\/p>\n<p>The delay is now the story as much as the arrest. ABC27&#8217;s August 2026 account lists Cugini, by then 31, of York, still facing the same three felonies: rape of a child, aggravated indecent assault of a child, and aggravated assault. A trial date of January 25, 2027 means a toddler will be in preschool before a jury is seated on allegations about her infancy. Continuances happen in serious cases. Lawyers withdraw, labs take time, dockets clog. None of that explains, to a city that handed this man a badge in 2023, why a probationary officer accused of injuring an infant in his girlfriend&#8217;s home was back in the community on a bond within weeks and is still awaiting trial deep into 2027. Bail is not a finding of safety. It is a finding that a dollar amount, here $200,000, was the condition a judge would accept.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Officer accused of sexual violence against 13-month-old\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/QSxCShw6WQA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The hiring timeline deserves a harder look than the first-day headlines gave it. Cugini was not a twenty-year veteran with a closet full of commendations and a union that could stall a firing. He was new. He had come out of the county 911 center, which means the city already knew him as a public-safety employee, and he had been a cavalry scout in the National Guard. Those are background facts, not character evidence, and they are not excuses. They are the file a department is supposed to read before it issues a gun and a radio. Probationary status is the period when a city is supposed to be the most willing to cut a bad hire loose. York did that part quickly once troopers filed charges. The question <a href=\"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/category\/news\/police-accountability-news\/\">police accountability<\/a> reporting has to ask is what, if anything, in the months between January 2023 and April 2024 would have surfaced a risk before a daycare worker did.<\/p>\n<p>This is not an isolated shape of case, even if the facts here are their own. The AEGIS Alliance has reported on other officers and police leaders charged or convicted in child-exploitation cases, including a <a href=\"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/2025\/12\/19\/mobile-alabama-police-detective-arrested-by-daphne-pd-for-child-sex-abuse-charges\/\">Mobile, Alabama, detective arrested by a neighboring department<\/a> and a <a href=\"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/2026\/07\/04\/bethel-ohio-police-chief-chad-essert-resigns-amid-70-count-sexual-misconduct-indictment-including-with-a-minor\/\">Bethel, Ohio, police chief who resigned under a 70-count sexual-misconduct indictment<\/a>. The pattern is not that every department is corrupt. The pattern is that a badge is a poor character witness, and that the public finds out when a child is already hurt. Muldrow&#8217;s statement tried to separate the institution from the accused man. Separation on paper is easy. Separation in the minds of parents who watched a city officer&#8217;s name sit next to an infant&#8217;s injuries is not.<\/p>\n<p>Shoeman&#8217;s charge is the other half of the same weekend, and it should not be folded into his. Endangering the welfare of a child, as filed here, accuses a parent of failing to get medical care and of leaving a baby with a person who was hurting her, not of committing the sexual offense troopers charged to Cugini. Those are different crimes with different intent. If she pleads, the factual basis a judge accepts will matter for his trial, because a cooperator&#8217;s admission about a locked bathroom and a delayed hospital trip is the kind of testimony defense lawyers spend months trying to narrow. If she does not plead, both cases stay live, and a jury may hear them in pieces. Either way, the child is not a witness who can narrate April 2024. The medical record, the phone, and the adults&#8217; shifting stories are the case.<\/p>\n<p>Cugini&#8217;s not-guilty plea is not a technicality to be waved past. Rape of a child and aggravated indecent assault of a child are among the most serious felonies in the Pennsylvania crimes code, and aggravated assault in this file accuses him of causing or attempting serious bodily injury. A conviction would mean a long state prison term and sex-offender registration. An acquittal would mean the city fired, in effect, a man a jury did not believe had committed the crimes. Both outcomes are still available. What is no longer available is the idea that this was processed like an ordinary arrest. A probationary officer, a toddler with broken bones, a mother charged with waiting too long, and a trial date that sits in 2027 are the docket. The <a href=\"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/2026\/07\/06\/atlanta-cop-ordered-to-pay-21-million-for-paralyzing-man\/\">civil judgments against officers<\/a> that The AEGIS Alliance has covered show one way accountability arrives after criminal cases stall. In Dauphin County, the criminal case has not stalled forever. It has been scheduled, at last, for a winter morning almost three years after the daycare call.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former York City officer Steven Cugini is charged with raping a 13-month-old and remains free on $200,000 bail. ABC27 reported his trial is set for January 25, 2027. He has pleaded not guilty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":296,"featured_media":1022489,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,209225,24],"tags":[205353,197013,205858,205354,213395,193545,193557,193546,208912],"class_list":["post-1022359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-police-accountability-news","category-us-news","tag-acab","tag-crimes-against-children","tag-crooked-cops","tag-ftp","tag-lykens","tag-pedogate","tag-pedogatenews","tag-pennsylvania","tag-police-accountability"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Pennsylvania-cop-allegedly-raped-13-month-old-who-suffered-broken-bones-and-severe-bruising.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/296"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1022359"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1203571,"href":"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022359\/revisions\/1203571"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1022489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1022359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1022359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1022359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}