Ohio priest apologizes for destroying hard drive containing possible child porn

CNA Staff, Jul 18, 2024 / 14:15 pm

A priest in Ohio has issued an apology to parishioners after a media report revealed that he had destroyed a hard drive reportedly containing inappropriate pictures of children — and potentially child pornography — and then delayed reporting the incident to police. 

In a July 12 letter to parishioners at St. Susanna Catholic Church in Mason, Ohio, Father Barry Stechschulte said he wanted to “address” and “apologize for” his involvement in a controversy surrounding a priest accused of sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. 

Local Cincinnati ABC affiliate WCPO reported earlier this month on a yearslong controversy involving a Dayton-area priest, Father Tony Cutcher, who left ministry in 2021 amid a scandal involving “hundreds of text messages he exchanged with a 14-year-old boy.”

Some of the text messages included implied sexual overtones. Cutcher ultimately resigned from active priestly duties after an evaluation recommended a “restriction in ministry” stemming from the incident.

Part of WCPO’s report, meanwhile, focused on an incident in 2012 in which Stechschulte discovered “what looked like child pornography” on a computer at Holy Rosary Church in St. Mary’s, north of Dayton. Cutcher had previously served at that parish. 

The hard drive reportedly contained photos of “preteen” boys in “provocative poses.” The priest later told police that he “could not recall nudity or not, but it could have been.”

A deacon at the parish later said he “took the hard drive out of the computer and destroyed it with a blow torch at the request of Stechschulte,” a later police report said.

The priest did not report the incident to police until 2018. In his letter to parishioners this month, Stechschulte said he was “shocked and filled with disgust at what I saw” and that his “reaction in the moment was to ensure that no one else at the parish be exposed to it.” 

“So I instructed that the hard drive be destroyed. I realize that not reporting it was a terrible mistake, which I regret,” he said. 

“I wish that I could redo my initial decision from 2012,” the pastor added. “I am deeply sorry for the distress this has caused all of you.”

Police ultimately did a forensic analysis on multiple computers from Holy Rosary as well as computers from St. Peter Catholic Church in Huber Heights where Cutcher was serving in 2018. The machines “showed no child pornography or anything of concern.”

In a statement to WCPO, the Archdiocese of Cincinnati said it had “reported this case to law enforcement from the very beginning.”

“This has included reports to law enforcement in 2012, 2018, and 2021,” the archdiocese said. “In each instance no criminal charges were filed.”

In his letter, meanwhile, Stechschulte said he was “truly sorry” for his actions in 2012. 

“I love St. Susanna’s and ask you to forgive me and pray for me,” he wrote to parishioners.