A Lancaster County jury yesterday convicted a Manheim Township man of sexually assaulting two young children in the late-1990s, then later of being found with hundreds of images of child pornography including pictures of him raping children after he was arrested, following a four-day trial this week.

The jury found Eric S. Dorwart, of the 500 block of Pleasure Road, guilty on Sept. 18 of 16 total charges including rape of a child, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a child and aggravated indecent assault, among others.

District Attorney Heather Adams commended the jury for their verdict, which she called “a long-awaited victory for the victims and the rule of law.”

“The evidence presented throughout this trial was extensive, damning and deeply disturbing,” Adams said. “I would also like to thank Assistant District Attorney Haverstick and the entire prosecution team for their undeterred commitment to securing this verdict, and for the many investigators over the years who never ceased in their pursuit of justice.”

An attorney representing Dorwart, while acknowledging that photographic images of him sexually abusing children were “horrible,” cast doubt on their authenticity as well as on the accuracy of DNA evidence that identified Dorwart as the perpetrator of the 1990s sexual assault. One of the child victims had provided police with no other description of the perpetrator at the time other than that he had black hair, but Dorwart, his attorney noted, had red hair at the time.

“A 7-year-old is someone who knows the difference between black and red,” Dorwart’s attorney told the jury.

But regardless of what color the victim said the assailant’s hair was, “[Dorwart’s] semen is on her dress,” Assistant District Attorney Fritz Haverstick, who prosecuted the case, reminded the jury. “That is unassailable.”

Though Dorwart’s attorney compared the accuracy of DNA testing to a game of blackjack or roulette, Haverstick noted that the semen found on the victim’s clothing was “a near-perfect match” to Dorwart, with only a one in 220 quadrillion chance that it could have belonged to anyone else.

Jurors watched, many through pained faces, as Haverstick showed them pictures of Dorwart sexually abusing and raping small children and listed the crimes he was charged with committing in each image.

“We know what he has done,” Haverstick told the jury. “And we know that that is a man who rapes children.”

In his closing argument Haverstick told the jury that Dorwart’s defense was filled with “red herrings” and urged them to ignore the distractions and instead rely on the evidence to reach their verdict. Haverstick reminded the jury of the vast quantity of evidence the Commonwealth presented during the case, including the testimony of multiple witnesses, contemporary police reports, DNA evidence, photographs depicting Dorwart committing some of the crimes and Dorwart’s own confession to the decades-old sexual assault.

“Each of the pieces of evidence point in almost perfect alignment in one direction” towards Dorwart, Haverstick told the jury.

Before concluding his closing argument Haverstick reminded the jury that Dorwart’s victims “couldn’t fight back” due to their young ages.

“You can fight for them,” Haverstick told the jury. “You can finally give them a voice and hold him accountable.”

The jury returned a guilty verdict on all counts after less than an hour of deliberation.

Following the guilty verdict Judge Dennis Reinaker, who presided over the trial, increased Dorwart’s bail to $3 million. Judge Reinaker is scheduled to sentence Dorwart at a later date.

Dorwart, 56, sexually assaulted a 7-year-old girl and 5-year-old boy outside their home along Scenic Road near West Newport Road in Leacock Township in April 1997.

Both of the victims, now in their mid-30s, testified that Dorwart approached them the afternoon of April 4, 1997, and offered the girl money to perform sexual acts and then sexually assaulted her. Dorwart was a complete stranger to both of the victims.

After assaulting the girl Dorwart then assaulted the boy, they testified.

Though police immediately began searching for the perpetrator, initial leading suspects were ruled out through DNA testing and the case turned cold after several years of investigation. It would take another 26 years before investigators zeroed in on Dorwart as a person of interest.

DNA collected from abandoned trash outside of Dorwart’s residence in the 500 block of Pleasure Road was tested and produced a match to semen found on the children’s clothing. Police arrested Dorwart in August 2023.

Though Dorwart initially denied ever encountering the victims, he later admitted during an interview with Pennsylvania State Police that that he did encounter the children as he pulled over to urinate in the area and that he had sexual contact with them.

A search of Dorwart’s home following his arrest uncovered multiple electronics containing hundreds of images of child pornography, including depictions of nude infants and toddlers.

In total, more than 1,600 pornographic images of children were found on Dorwart’s cellphone and laptops. Of those images, 144 of them depicted Dorwart himself, with several of them showing him raping and engaging in sexual contact with three different pre-pubescent children in his bedroom, and another series of images depicted him performing sexual acts on an infant.

One image in particular depicted Dorwart in an unknown child’s room with his pants removed and smelling an unknown child’s shoes.

Pennsylvania State Police Trooper Dakota Baer filed the charges.