East Washington man pleads guilty to sexually assaulting teenage boy
An East Washington man who molested a teenage boy at least 25 times at his borough apartment over several months pleaded guilty Monday and was sentenced to serve time in prison.
Anthony Joseph Dinch Jr., 30, pleaded guilty in Washington County Court to involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a person under 16 and unlawful contact with a minor, and Judge Traci McDonald immediately sentenced him to serve four to eight years in a state prison followed by five years on probation.
According to court documents, the 15-year-old victim told East Washington police in July 2023 about the assaults, which occurred several times between November 2022 and May 2023. The accuser said Dinch regularly walked around shirtless inside his East Wheeling Street apartment and supplied him with alcohol while there. The victim told investigators he and Dinch would frequently sleep in the same bed.
At the time of his arrest in late September 2023, Dinch was an elected precinct committee person and chairman of the Young Republicans committee within the Washington County Republican Party, but party officials distanced themselves from him after the allegations came to light.
He also was the Republican nominee for a position on East Washington Borough Council, but it was too late at the time of his arrest to remove him from the ballot. He narrowly lost the 2023 general election to write-in candidate Thomas Marshall, a Democrat who won the race by a slim margin of 147 to 142.
Dinch’s public defender, John Paul Vensel II, politely declined comment on the case. The state Attorney General’s office, which prosecuted Dinch, confirmed the plea and sentencing but did not comment further on the case.