In December 2019, a local priest was arrested outside St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Strongsville, where he worked, for allegedly possessing child sexual abuse materials (i.e., child pornography). According to court documents, from 2017 to 2019 the man solicited sexually explicit images of minors online and engaged in sexual acts with minor victims in exchange for alcohol and other things of value. He used multiple fake online personas, including a teenage girl, and several social media platforms to contact minor victims, some of whom he knew through a parish where the children and their families were affiliated. He enticed three minor victims to send sexually explicit photographs and videos by threatening to expose embarrassing information about them if they did not send him more. He followed through on those threats on some occasions, sending photos to the victims’ mothers. He also used the social networking site Grindr.com to make contact with a minor victim for the purpose of engaging in a commercial sex act. He then enticed the victim to identify another minor victim with whom he could engage in commercial sex acts. The offender met the victims on multiple occasions for the purpose of engaging in sex acts in exchange for money and alcohol. Investigators found the man in possession of a laptop computer and external hard drive that contained hundreds of images and videos of CSAM, as well as a Dropbox cloud storage account where he stored more than 128,000 images of CSAM. In July 2021, the man pleaded guilty to two counts of sex trafficking of a minor, three counts of sexual exploitation of a child, and one count each of transportation of child pornography, receipt and distribution of visual depiction of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct, and possession of child pornography. He was sentenced to life in prison in November and was placed on administrative leave from the Diocese of Cleveland after his arrest.