By Susan Tebben
Ohio Capital Journal
COLUMBUS — The arrest of a former executive at a Catholic charity organization in Columbus stands as a high-profile test of a new anti-grooming law passed just last year by Ohio lawmakers.
Scott Hartman faces a number of different charges related to allegations of sexual conduct with a minor, and one of the charges, misdemeanor grooming, didn’t exist before April 2025. Hartman has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Hartman, 49, was arrested by the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force Oct. 1, for “online sexual abuse of a minor,” according to a release from the office earlier this month.
According to the sheriff’s office, an investigation began in April after a “teenage victim reported to school counselors that she had engaged in an online relationship with Hartman that included text messages and video calls involving video sex acts and the exchange of nude images and videos.”
The activities went on for six months before they were discovered, the sheriff’s office said, alleging Hartman attempted to meet the teenager for sex and “convinced the victim to delete any evidence and attempted to hide the fact that she was a minor.”
“Due to the nature of their conversations, one or more of his alleged social media accounts were shut down and reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement.
Hartman was listed as a senior vice president and chief development officer for The Catholic Foundation.
The foundation’s president and CEO, Loren Brown, said Hartman had been fired and the foundation was cooperating with law enforcement.
“What Scott Hartman did is a violation of trust and stands in direct opposition to our mission and our Catholic faith,” Brown said in a statement.
Hartman was indicted on Oct. 13, charged with pandering sexually oriented matter involving a minor and other related felony offenses, along with tampering with evidence, and a misdemeanor grooming charge.
The grooming charge was part of a bill enacted in April 2025 to update sex offense statutes in the state of Ohio. Other provisions were updates to civil actions related to misconduct alleged to have happened years, even decades ago.
Former Ohio state Sen. Bill Seitz, a Republican from Cincinnati, co-sponsored Ohio House Bill 322, which came about partly because of Ohioans who wanted more consequences for those who fail to report alleged sexual abuse, and those who have groomed victims before committing any sexual acts. But it was a balancing act to make sure those attempting to help children didn’t see unintended consequences.
“The trick, obviously, is to differentiate between the casual, sympathetic arm around the shoulder for somebody who’s facing an adverse childhood experience — which is perfectly legal — and something that shows elements of a pattern going well beyond that,” Seitz told the Capital Journal.
It was that pattern and proving intent in the pattern that gave the bill appeal, he said.
The grooming statute under which Hartman is charged states that no person older than 18 years old can “engage in a pattern of conduct” with anyone younger than 16 years old and four years younger than the adult when “the pattern of conduct would cause a reasonable adult person to believe that the person is communicating with a minor” for the purposes of sexual activity or preparing a minor to engage in sexual activity, according to the law.
The charge is a misdemeanor, a low-level offense which typically does not carry a significant prison sentence, unless charged alongside felonies.
While Seitz didn’t comment on Hartman’s case specifically, he said having the law in place will help not only be able to charge offenders in current cases, but allow more civil action and deter more serious crimes.
“I do not think there will be a huge influx of cases, just because it will be somewhat difficult to prove, but (supporters of the bill) wanted something on the books that would enable this kind of conduct to be nipped in the bud before it became far more serious,” Seitz said.
Also included in the legislation was a longer statute of limitations for charging those required to report any information about potential sex abuse crimes who fail to do so.
H.B. 322 moved the statute of limitations from two year to four, something mothers who talked with Seitz about bringing up the bill wanted to see. The group was advocating for more punishment particularly forpriests accused of abuse.
“That was a concern that these mothers had, too, that by the time they found out that some of the priests were acting badly, the time for any possible prosecution of others who might have known of the priests’ malevolent activity were off the hook because the statute of limitations had expired,” Seitz said.
A third component of the law that was important to Seitz was updating a law from the mid-2000s, giving individuals the right to use civil action in cases where statutes of limitation had expired.
In the law, if a court finds in a civil proceeding that there is enough evidence to prove an individual is a child sex offender, Seitz said the individual would be placed on a sex offender list.
While he doesn’t think the law passed last year will lead to an overabundance of legal cases, he believes times have changed enough to make the laws enough to target abuses that he hopes are becoming “a thing of the past.”
“I think people were very, very relaxed in their attitudes back in the 50s and 60s, and even into the 70s,” Seitz said. “But now, all of these organizations have adopted pretty stringent requirements for training and for making sure that they’re not letting the wrong kind of people around the kids.”
In Hartman’s case, a bond was set at $750,000, and he remains incarcerated as the court case continues.