In 2012, after he arrived at Holy Rosary Church in the rural community of St. Mary’s, Father Barry Stechschulte sought to destroy a hard drive which contained gay pornography and child sex abuse images, according to a police report obtained by The Independent.
The device had been used by the church’s previous pastor, Tony Cutcher, per the report. A deacon discovered the images while attempting to refurbish the computer and reported them to Stechschulte.
Stechschulte said he was “so taken aback” by the images he didn’t look at them carefully.
They’re described in the report as “male homosexual pornography” and pictures of children in “provocative poses.”
Stechschulte told the deacon he “wanted the stuff erased,” according to police, though the father said he could not remember if he told the deacon to physically destroy any computer parts.
The deacon then removed the hard drive and burnt it with a blow torch, he told police.
“I instructed that the hard drive be destroyed,” Stechschulte wrote in a July letter to parishioners obtained by the Cincinnati Enquirer. “I realize that not reporting it was a terrible mistake, which I regret.”
It would be a full six years before police in the area were alerted to the images, local news station WCPO found.
Cutcher told police he didn’t download any child sex abuse images to the computer intentionally, saying such an act was “not something he would purposely do ever” and “someone must have added” any images of children, according to the police report.
Police weren’t able to determine if any illegal material was in fact on the computer, but community members still felt betrayed.
Cutcher, who was pastor at Holy Rosary before Stechschulte arrived, was investigated by Montgomery County prosecutors in 2021 for sending hundreds of texts to a teen parishioner. Cutcher hasn’t been charged with any crime and has since resigned from the church.
In July, Stechschulte announced his resignation from St. Susanna, a larger church he moved to after Holy Rosary.
Since then he’s been reassigned to a cluster of rural churches outside the Dayton area, effective October 14, according to the Archdiocese of Cincinnati website.
The Independent has contacted the Archdiocese for comment.
Community members said they were upset the priest has remained within the church.
"When the archbishop knowingly places a cleric that violated the child protection decree at a parish; it appears as though he proclaims to offenders, enablers and parents that child protection is largely a performative endeavor," Teresa Dinwiddie-Herrmann, co-founder of local advocacy group Ohioans for Child Protection, told WCPO. "How long will Catholic parents allow this cycle of enabling, abuse and cover up to continue?"