Prosecutors Want 14-Year Sentence For 70-Year-Old Detroit Priest In Child Porn Case

CBS Detroit
July 14, 2015

http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2015/07/14/prosecutors-want-14-year-sentence-for-70-year-old-detroit-priest-in-child-porn-case/

Richard James Kurtz

DETROIT (WWJ/AP) – Prosecutors are seeking a 14-year prison sentence in a child pornography case involving a priest who secretly recorded hockey players while teaching years ago at a Detroit high school.

The government calls the Rev. Richard Kurtz a “wolf in shepherd’s clothing.” The 70-year-old is returning to federal court for his sentence Tuesday.

Kurtz’s collection of child porn was discovered in 2011 when priests were packing his belongings in Oakland County and Chicago.

The government says Kurtz went into the hockey locker room and secretly recorded video of players as they changed clothes in the late 1990s. Beyond that, the FBI also discovered that Kurtz transferred additional child pornographic material from his residence in Clarkston, Mich. to another home in Chicago.

In 2001, Kurtz was dismissed from University of Detroit Jesuit High School when a student accused him of sexual assault on a trip to Colorado. The family didn’t pursue charges at the time, but Kurtz was convicted 10 years later and placed on probation.

He was living in Missouri last year when he was arrested in the child porn case.