Criminal complaint details priest allegations

By Matthew Glowicki
Courier-Journal
August 24, 2015

http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/crime/2015/08/24/feds-charge-louisville-priest-child-porn/32271987/

Father Stephen Pohl

Ex-pastor of St. Margaret Mary Parish Stephen Pohl, who now faces federal charges of accessing child pornography, took more than 150 posed photos of his students, some of which constitute child erotica, according to a criminal complaint unsealed Monday.

However, Pohl is accused of viewing multiple pornographic online images of nude young boys ranging in age from infancy to mid-teens with their genitals exposed.

Pohl, 57, viewed those images on his laptop and desktop computer seized from the office and rectory of St. Margaret Mary Parish, said Detective Dan Jackman of the Louisville Metro Police Crimes Against Children Unit in the complaint affidavit.

The Louisville case began after a 10-year-old St. Margaret Mary student told his mother that "Father Steve" singled him out at an after-school club to take a series of "weird" photos on his cell phone. Hands on his knees and legs spread apart, the boy posed, following the priest's orders.

"One can clearly see up the child's shorts and underwear," Jackman wrote of one of the photos while another is "focused on the child's genitals."

A day later, the boy's mother emailed Pohl to see the pictures of her son, according to the affidavit. She received a photo of her son with his legs closed and arms at his side. She requested all photos taken and received no response.

While out shopping soon after with her husband, the boy's mother again emailed and also called Pohl. He returned the call, telling her he was out shopping and that the photos had been deleted.

But moments later, when the parents ran into Pohl at the store and asked to see his phone, they found the images of their boy, as well as other pictures "of other young boys posed in the same manner," the affidavit reads.

Pohl told the parents the boys posed to show off their muscles, the boy's father told Jackman. During a search of the rectory, according to the affidavit, Pohl admitted to taking the pictures, saying he posed the children to make them look "more manly."

The boy's parents contacted the parents of another child they recognized in the cell phone images. That student recounted a similar experience of posing for the priest, details the complaint, once with his older brother and another time alone on the bleachers of the school gym.

Pohl, who resigned late last week from his post of six years, was charged Monday and appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Anthony Porcelli  in U.S. District Court in Tampa, Fla. Pohl will be sent to Louisville for his detention hearing.

The pornographic images investigators discovered were never downloaded to the computer, the complaint notes, but were viewed online by Pohl and detected through forensic analysis of the computer hard drives. Law enforcement obtained the digital evidence after a search warrant executed on the parish office and rectory Aug. 12 where Pohl lived and worked.

He had told law enforcement "there were some items on his computer that probably should not be there" and that he had visited "inappropriate" websites.

The priest was put on leave last week by the Archdiocese of Louisville, which publicly shared the preliminary findings of the police investigation Friday. The St. Margaret Mary community was told their pastor snapped up to 200 images of clothed schoolchildren, some of which were "inappropriate."

An arrest warrant was issued Friday, and the Tampa Division of the FBI, along with the Pinellas County sheriff’s office, arrested Pohl in Indian Rocks Beach, Fla., that day. He was charged on a single count of child porn possession.

Pohl was held in the Pinellas County Jail until Monday, when he was transferred to the United States marshal’s custody.

A Louisville archdiocese spokeswoman declined to release Pohl's personnel file Friday, but did say he previously held appointments dating back to the mid-1980s at St. Monica, St. Thomas and Basilica of St. Joseph parishes in Bardstown, Ky., and St. Athanasius and St. Gabriel parishes in Louisville.