#Convicted Bronx pedophile working with kids in Virginia, lawsuit alleges

A convicted pedophile from the Bronx has been tutoring kids in Virginia — and one of his New York victims wants to make sure everyone knows it.

Shawn Ganley was just 14 when he was introduced to guidance counselor Paul Gruber at Our Lady of Refuge in the 1980s, a meeting which allegedly sparked months of sexual abuse.

But it’s what Gruber, who pled guilty to sex-abuse charges in the mid-1980s, is doing now that has Ganley speaking out.

Ganley is suing Gruber and others under New York’s Child Victims Act, which opened a legal window to revive old sex-abuse cases.

He wants a court to force Gruber to fully disclose “his complete and entire history of sexual abuse against children” to the teens he currently tutors and in his online profiles for tutoring work, according to the legal filing.

“I want to make sure the community where he works and lives knows who is on their doorstep,” Ganley, now 50, told The Post.

Gruber, now 71 and living in Arlington, Va., could not be reached for comment. A LinkedIn profile for his PTG Tutoring Services appears to have been taken down. The self-employed college-admissions tutor was profiled in 2016 by InsideNova, a website that covers Northern Virginia.

Gruber’s crimes came to light after another victim’s family violently confronted him, sparking a police investigation. Just a few months after being sentenced to probation in the Bronx case, Gruber got a new job at Brooklyn’s Fontbonne Hall Academy, where he allegedly abused girls from 1986 to 1988. He was fired years later when the allegations surfaced.

Gruber’s criminal conviction came a decade before New York established its sex-offender registry.

“I hope nobody else has been victimized,” said Ganley, who spotted Gruber’s photo in the InsideNova article. “I was just one unlucky piece of popcorn in the popcorn bag.”

The counselor was known as “Gruber the Grabber” to kids at Our Lady of Refuge, who made life hell for his molested victims, Ganley recalled.

“It was torture,” said Ganley.  “I would go to school, kids would come after you, ‘You were one of the guys Gruber the Grabber would touch.’ You would get harassed on a daily basis.”

Ganley was playing pinball at an after-school program when he was introduced to Gruber by Father John Jenik,  who years later also was accused of sexual abuse.

Jenik praised Ganley as a “smart young man” and suggested that he take an IQ test given by Gruber. Ganley ended up at Gruber’s home, where the guidance counselor showed porn flicks on an 8 mm reel, offered cash and then molested him.

“His mother was in the house when this was all going on, and all he had was a curtain in the doorway,” Ganley recalled.

Jenik tried to bully kids into silence, Ganley contends. “I still remember that chiseled, angry look of intimidation,” Ganley said of Jenik urging him not to speak to cops. “To this day, it still haunts me.”

The Catholic Church abandoned Ganley during that dark time, said Craig Vernon, Ganley’s lawyer.

“When Shawn needed healing, he was supposed to turn to his church,” Vernon said. “Instead he was dismissed.”

Ganley’s mother, a devout Catholic, fought back and went to authorities.

For other sex abuse victims, Ganley has a piece of advice.

“Say something to somebody. You may in turn empower somebody else that may be in the same situation, and you don’t even know. It helps.”