MASON, Ohio — Father Barry Stechschulte is set to start his new assignment at several rural churches north of Dayton on Oct. 14. He resigned as pastor of St. Susanna in Mason more than two months ago when hundreds of parishioners demanded his exit.
His reassignment comes after a WCPO 9 I-Team investigation into the destruction of alleged child pornography on a parish computer that belonged to a different priest years before.
Meanwhile, Deacon Marty Brown, who told police that he took the hard drive out of the computer and destroyed it with a blow torch at the request of Stechschulte, has been placed on a leave of absence from active ministry.
“I cannot comment further as this is a personnel matter,” said Archdiocese of Cincinnati spokesperson Mike Schafer, who confirmed the leave of absence.
Stechschulte announced in a message to St. Susanna parishioners July 29 that he was stepping down. This came after more than 500 people signed a petition calling for his resignation following a WCPO 9 I-Team report that showed he ordered the destruction of alleged child porn and waited six years to report it to police while at a different parish.
He will now minister to a cluster of churches in the northwest section of the archdiocese near his hometown of Minster and not far from his former church, Holy Rosary in St. Mary’s, where he admitted ordering Brown to destroy a hard drive.
The archdiocese posted Stechschulte’s new assignment on its website: he will be appointed parochial vicar of a family of parishes which includes Holy Trinity, Coldwater; Mary Help of Christians, Ft. Recovery; St. Anthony, St. Anthony; St. Joseph, St. Joseph; St. Mary, Philothea; St. Paul, Sharpsburg; and St. Peter, St. Peter.
Brown resigned as facilities director at St. Patrick and Holy Rosary parishes in August. A posting in a Aug. 25 parish bulletin stated that Holy Rosary Parish and School wanted to hire a full-time maintenance supervisor.
“The parents of St. Susanna asked that Father Barry step down and a few parents from Holy Rosary asked the same of their deacon, believing they had broken the Child Protection Decree, and their trust,” according to a statement from Ohioans for Child Protection co-founders Rebecca Surendorff and Teresa Dinwiddie-Hermann.
“Our archbishop has allowed Father Barry to continue to be entrusted with the moral guidance of another parish, while the deacon has stepped down. But when will our archbishop be held accountable for his failures as the leader while these recent cases and others like Father Drew, Father Barry, Father Cutcher, Seminarian Witt, and more, all occurred under his leadership,” they wrote.
While the I-Team report focused on former priest Tony Cutcher, it also revealed Stechschulte's role in delaying public knowledge of what he did.
It happened at Holy Rosary Church in St. Mary’s, a rural area filled with cross-tipped churches. Cutcher was pastor there for several years.
When Stechschulte arrived as the new pastor in July 2012, he and Brown told police they discovered what looked like child pornography while refurbishing an old desktop computer that Cutcher had used from a storage room.
“Father Barry said that upon looking at the computer he found two file folders, one containing male homosexual pornography, and the other file contained pictures of boys … he said he can only recall boys with no shirts on. I asked him if the kids were obviously underage with him saying ‘yes’ and that they were preteen, probably 8 to 10 years of age,” according to St. Mary’s 2018 police report.
“He did describe the boys as being in provocative poses. He again said he could not recall nudity or not, but it could have been,” Stechschulte told police, according to the report.
Police were never able to determine if anything illegal existed on that computer hard drive.
The deacon told police that he took the hard drive out of the computer and destroyed it with a blow torch at the request of Stechschulte, according to the police report.
“Father Barry said at the time, he did not realize the repercussions of not revealing what they had found. Father Barry again said that he should not have destroyed the evidence,” according to the police report.
Cutcher was never charged with a crime.
Just over two years later, Montgomery County prosecutors investigated Cutcher in 2021 for sending hundreds of texts messages to a 14-year-old boy while pastor of St. Peter in Huber Heights.
Cutcher resigned from active ministry in April 2021, following a scandal at the parish.
Stechschulte, though, moved from Holy Rosary to become pastor of a much larger church — St. Susanna, where he also oversaw a school.
“I understand that the information in this report is distressing for many of you and may impact your trust in me as your pastor… I instructed the hard drive be destroyed. I realize that not reporting it was a terrible mistake, which I regret,” Fr. Barry Stechschulte wrote in a July 12 letter to the St. Susanna community, days after the WCPO report.
