The Polish-born seminarian at the heart of a child porn and sex scandal that’s rocking a Roman Catholic seminary was convicted of possessing child porn and given a six-month suspended sentence, a day after a Vatican representative shut the seminary down.
Known now only as Piotr Z, the 27-year-old student was convicted of downloading hundreds of Internet child porn images. He could have faced up to two years behind bars in the case, but reports in the European press indicated he gave a “factual confession” and that influenced the judge.
Authorities have said child porn and violent sex images were found on the St. Poelten seminary’s main computer and on Piotr Z’s hard drive, as well as images of seminarians engaging sex play with each other and their elder instructors.
Piotr Z is the only figure in the St. Poelten scandal to be charged officially.
Diocesan Bishop Kurt Krenn – who had previously dismissed the scandal as a case of “schoolboy pranks” – continues to refuse resignation, though the director and an assistant director of the seminary have left already.
Bishop Klaus Kueng, appointed by the Vatican to investigate the St. Poelten scandal, shut down the seminary August 12, saying the seminary leadership paid “too little attention to recruiting requirements. A new beginning is necessary.”
In other news on the fight against child porn:
LONDON – The British detective who gained national fame reading a poem at the memorial for two murdered schoolgirls is in jail for “concocting a lie to escape charges of downloading child porn.” Brian Stevens, the police liaison to one of the murdered girls’ families in 2002, was convicted of making up an alibi after the FBI gave his name to British police in a probe tracing those using credit cards for a U.S. child porn site – an alibi he didn’t need when that case against him collapsed.
LAFAYETTE, La. - A former Roman Catholic priest is going to prison for ten years on a federal child porn charge – his second such conviction. Patrick Kujawa had been removed from the priesthood over the first case, but this sentencing involves his February arrest after hundreds of child porn images were found on his home computers – while he was on probation following a guilty plea in the first case. Kujawa had been associate pastor of Holy Cross Church in Morgan City. Kujawa was discovered when his credit card number turned up in records of an American child porn Website.
