HOLLIDAYSBURG — A Blair County judge declined Wednesday to dismiss child rape, indecent assault and other charges filed against a man who temporarily shared his Logan Township residence in 2019 with the child’s family.

Brian S. Cinko, 48, who was living in Johnstown when Logan Township police arrested him in November 2019, has contested the criminal charges contending the child fabricated the allegations.

Asked by Cinko’s attorney, the child, now 9 years old, testified in court Wednesday about putting a sticker on a deer named George and how George’s leg had been injured in a bear trap that the child said he opened with a stick.

In addition to presenting the made-up story, the child also testified that Cinko touched him “pretty much everywhere” by using his mouth and his “potty parts.”

“I didn’t really like him doing that,” the boy said in response to a question posed by First Assistant District Attorney Nichole Smith.

Cinko, who is a lifetime registrant on the state’s list of sexual offenders, has been in Blair County Prison since his arrest on $250,000 cash bail.

In challenging the child’s testimony during Wednesday’s hearing, defense attorney David J. Weaver asked the boy if anyone saw what was happening to him. The child said his younger sister, now 6, did, but his mom and dad didn’t because they were in a room watching TV.

President Judge Elizabeth Doyle, who heard the youngster testify, announced shortly thereafter that she was denying the defense petition challenging the criminal charges, allowing the case to head to trial, possibly in December.

Doyle also acknowledged that prior to Wednesday’s hearing, she had already read a 122-page transcript and watched a two-hour recording of the child being interviewed at the Altoona Center for Child Justice.

At Wednesday’s hearing, Weaver asked Jackie Condron, who interviewed the child at the center, if she was aware of the boy’s propensity to lie and to offer fantastical statements.

Condron said this boy wouldn’t be the first one to make fantastical statements during his interview.

Weaver also questioned Condron about the boy’s claim that it happened every day or about every other day and that the parents never saw anything.

“It’s common that children can be abused in the same household while the parents are around,”

Condron said.

When Smith asked Condron about her recollection of the interview, Condron spoke of the boy providing “an incredible amount of (sensory) detail” associated with what he said he endured. Police, based on those allegations, charged Cinko with multiple counts of child rape, aggravated indecent assault of a child, indecent assault of a child, unlawful contact with a minor, corruption of minors and harassment.

The boy’s father, who also testified at Wednesday’s hearing, said he and his wife and their two children lived with Cinko for about six weeks in the fall of 2019, before Cinko moved to Johnstown.

Criminal charges indicate that Cinko, after moving to Johnstown, returned to Blair County where he visited the boy’s school and tried to give him candy.

Mirror Staff Writer Kay Stephens is at 814-946-7456.