Centre County Man Accused of Sexually Abusing Child Over 3-Year Period

A Bellefonte area man was arrested Wednesday on charges that he sexually abused a child under the age of 13 over a three-year period.

Dominick J. Ball, 43, of Benner Township, is accused of abusing the child on multiple occasions between 2022 and 2025 in Clinton and Centre counties. The child’s specific age, gender and relationship to Ball were redacted from a criminal complaint.

The child told a forensic interviewer at the Children’s Advocacy Center of Centre County about times in which Ball touched their genitals, forced the child to engage in sexual acts and took inappropriate pictures of them, according to an affidavit of probable cause filed by state police at Rockview.

Ball also showed pornographic videos to the child, said he would perform the depicted acts on the child when they were older and pulled them by the hair toward his exposed genitals, police wrote

The child reported that the alleged assaults occurred late at night when others were sleeping, and that Ball would give them money for the online game Roblox before or afterward.

Ball is charged with four felony counts of aggravated indecent assault of a child and one felony count each of unlawful contact with a minor, indecent assault of a person less than 13 years old and corruption of minors.

He was arraigned on Wednesday morning by District Judge Kelley Gillette-Walker, who denied bail, citing “flight risk, very serious charges [and] possible lengthy sentence,” according to the court docket.

A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Oct. 8.