CINCINNATI — Two Cincinnati police detectives drove into the parking lot of St. Anthony Shrine and Friary on Colerain Avenue on Monday morning, Aug. 19, 2019, just as Father Geoff Drew was getting into his blue 2017 Ford Escape.
Text messages from Drew’s phone, extracted by police and obtained by WCPO, show that Drew had a busy morning planned.
He was set to hear a last-minute confession from a young man who wanted privacy because he worried he would get emotional. They agreed to meet from 11:15 to 11:30 a.m. at a Werk Road condo, which police and auditor records show that Drew co-owned with a young man he knew from his time as pastor at St. Maximillian Kolbe in Liberty Township.
Drew also planned to visit his elderly mother at her Green Township home, and then meet a priest friend for Mass and a lunch of BLT sandwiches at 12:30 p.m.
But police had their own plans for Drew.
That morning a Hamilton County grand jury had indicted Drew on nine counts of rape of an altar boy, in what would become one of the most highly publicized and controversial crimes in recent memory.
It would lead to the resignation of an auxiliary bishop, the demand for a Vatican investigation by 1,500 local Catholics, and questions about how the Archdiocese of Cincinnati handled complaints that spanned three decades, across three different counties where Drew worked in churches and schools first as a music or band director, and later as a priest.
This story contains portions of police audio interviews with priests, former students and parishioners, a second sexual abuse victim and Drew himself. For the first time, the public can hear for themselves how police built their case and who knew about Drew's behavior with young boys long before his arrest.
“Are you still able to meet today,” the man seeking a confession wrote in a text message to Drew at 11:50 a.m., followed by “???” at 1:10 p.m.
By then, detectives had called in uniform officers to make a traffic stop on Drew as he drove north on Interstate 75 and arrest him.
Police towed and searched Drew’s car, discovering a few bottles of liquor in a cardboard box, including an expensive Macallan 12 scotch, as well as his passport, birth certificate and roughly 20 pairs of unpackaged white Hanes underwear, according to police records.
“It’s sad, sickening case I’ll tell you that. And it’s incredible that somebody with that type of authority would prey on little children,” then Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters said at a press conference that afternoon.
Ultimately, Drew pleaded guilty to the rapes in December 2021. A judge sentenced him to seven years in prison, which was set by the plea deal, but added that she would have gladly sent him to prison for life.
Now as Drew is set to be released from prison in August 2026 to an uncertain future as a registered sex offender, WCPO examined his case in new detail using text messages, audio and video interviews, and thousands of pages of documents obtained from police and prosecutors through public records requests.
It reveals that priests, parents, and church and school officials knew about Drew’s inappropriate behavior with boys for decades, ranging from lingering hugs and shoulder massages to vacations and camping trips where alcohol was served and a boy blacked out from drinking too much.
In two cases a priest and parishioner, from different decades and churches, told police they put their concerns about Drew in writing to the seminary.
“Your investigation has revealed a lot more information that was not public knowledge at the time that Father Drew was sentenced,” said attorney Konrad Kircher, who has represented hundreds of victims of clergy sex abuse, including many in lawsuits against the Archdiocese of Cincinnati.
After listening to audio recordings of police interviews, Kircher said he doesn’t understand how the archdiocese could have allowed Drew to work near children for so long.
“There’s no legitimate explanation,” Kircher said. “There’s only two possibilities: incompetence or dishonesty.”
One parent said she met with then Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Binzer for more than two hours in the fall of 2011, after Drew told her seventh-grade son that he had nice legs and should wear pants instead of shorts at Mass because it distracted him.
“He did tell me that I was not the first person who had come and complained. That he had multiple reports of things that Geoff Drew was doing, and they were investigating,” said the parent who WCPO is not identifying to protect the son.
“And I asked him, you know that this isn’t a safe environment, why hasn’t he (Drew) been removed? And he told me that the reason was because they do not have anyone to replace him,” the parent said.
Binzer declined to comment, referring WCPO to the archdiocese. While he resigned from his leadership role in 2020, after the fallout from the Drew case, he remains a priest locally.
Archbishop Dennis Schnurr, who has led the archdiocese since 2009, declined an interview through a spokesperson.
“We cannot account for everything the previous administration of the pastoral center, including the late Archbishop Pilarczyk, knew and didn’t know 25 years ago,” spokesperson Jennifer Schack wrote in an email response to WCPO’s questions. “Additionally, the availability or non-availability of a replacement priest would not have been a consideration.”
The lead Cincinnati police detective, Dana Jones, said Drew’s case still haunts her because it was one of the most difficult in her 28-year career. She retired last April, after 18 years in the personal crimes unit, investigating some of the most horrific cases including sexual assault and child abuse.
She questions whether the archdiocese did enough to prevent Drew’s abuse and grooming of young boys and notes the hundreds of sexually explicit images of men that police found on Drew’s cell phone, which she mentioned in her report.
“The reason Drew is in prison today is because victim Paul Neyer went to police,” Jones said.
Before Drew's arrest: a European vacation and leave of absence
Drew had been pastor of St. Ignatius of Loyola in Green Township for almost exactly a year, when he took a 16-day vacation to Austria in early July 2019, according to his text messages.
Immediately upon his return, on July 20, the chancellor told him he would be placed on leave from St. Ignatius, where he oversaw the largest Catholic elementary school in Ohio, according to Drew’s text messages.
The Hamilton County prosecutor’s office had gotten a complaint from parents that Drew had sent text messages to their young son, according to a Green Township police report.
“Sorry to send a text such as this, and we can talk in the morning, but I’m being put on leave due to complaints about minors feeling uncomfortable with me, primarily servers in the sacristy. I’m not accused of any sexual impropriety. The chancellor, Fr Steve Angi, called and told me this on Saturday and I asked to meet with the archbishop today but received no response. Needless to say, I do have a call into a canon lawyer as well,” Drew wrote to Fr. David Kobak on July 22, 2019.
He asked Kobak to fill in on Masses and funerals that week, and if he could stay at St. Anthony Friary for a few days.
“The lodging would be temporary til I figure something else out. Later this week then I plan to go on retreat next week and the archdiocese is sending me to St. Luke’s in Silver Spring the following week. So no more than a few nights this week and the next to weekends. After that is up in the air,” Drew wrote.
But the visit to St. Luke’s Institute, a treatment center for priests, deacons and the religious, was delayed, Drew later wrote. So, he would spend nearly a month at the friary, living in a small, sparse room with little to do. He offered to help with chores, prayed and slept, visited his mother, and reassured his supporters of his innocence, according to his texts.
“The archdiocese said it is NOT an allegation of sexual impropriety but other than that they’ve really shared nothing specific. Very frustrating to say the least. I spoke with a canon lawyer (retired priest) yesterday who will be my advocate and based on what I’ve been told he thinks the whole situation is very, very strange including the archdiocese denying me due process. I’m confident I’ll be reinstated since I’ve done nothing wrong but for now it is what it is,” Drew wrote repeatedly to friends, parishioners and fellow priests.
Meanwhile, Detective Jones was just getting started on what would be one of her most high-profile, and difficult cases.
A fellow police officer, Ken Kober, had asked her on July 27 to speak to a friend, Paul Neyer, about the sexual abuse he had suffered as a young boy, decades earlier, by a now priest.
“He explained his friend was struggling and wasn’t sure about coming forward,” Jones wrote in her report.
Archdiocese officials said Drew had been accused of behavior that violated the Decree on Child Protection. Many media outlets aired stories about upset parents who said archdiocese leaders were refusing to answer their questions.
“The priest from the local media stories is the same priest who sexually abused (my) friend,” Kober told Jones the next morning, according to her report.
On July 30, Neyer went to Green Township and Cincinnati police detectives to report his sexual abuse.
His ordeal began in 1988 when he was age 9 or 10. Drew would rub his back while he played the piano in St. Jude’s music room, and the touching progressed to his legs and then his penis and testicles. When he became an altar boy, Drew often summoned him to his church office. Neyer said he still remembered Drew’s red leather chair in the office where he was repeatedly raped and molested. Neyer believed that Drew took a photo of him during one sexual encounter, according to the police report.
“He always used to tell me that he loved me and that I was good,” Neyer said during his videotaped interview with Jones on July 30, 2019.
“Do you remember if he said what would happen if you told,” Jones asked.
“He always just told me you know this was our secret and you have to be quiet,” Neyer said.
Neyer also described an encounter he had with Drew and another man a few years later, when he was age 14 or 15.
He told Jones that he was in an online chat room and agreed to meet a man, who he did not realize was Drew until he saw him. He followed Drew to a house where he had sex with him and another man. Neyer could not identify the second man during his interview with Jones, only saying that he appeared to be in his 20s at the time.
“I have no law enforcement background but to me, would that not have been part of a plea deal? Is to share who the accomplices were?” asked Rebecca Surendorff, who was in Neyer’s class at St. Jude’s, and remembers Drew keeping him and other boys after class or Mass to help with special tasks.
“I would say that someone who rapes a 14-year-old is a public safety issue,” said Surendorff, who co-founded Ohioans for Child Protection after Drew’s arrest in 2019.
The Hamilton County prosecutor’s office said the second male offender, “was not associated with the church," according to Neyer.
"He never got a name of this person and only had a vague recollection of where the meeting took place. It was at a private residence. The police even drove him around the general area where he said it took place but he could not identify a specific residence, so the police could go no further in trying to identify this person, said Mark Piepmeier, first assistant prosecuting attorney.
Drew wants ''to tell my side of the story."
Cincinnati and Green Township police were looking for Drew on Aug. 1, 2019. They stopped by his Werk Road condo but aborted the search warrant after a neighbor said Drew hadn’t lived there for several years, according to Jones’ report.
Next, they went to St. Anthony’s Shrine and Friary, but did not see Drew’s car in the parking lot so they drove to the home of Drew’s mother in Green Township. She told police that her son would be there soon.
“Fr. Drew inquired about the investigation, but we declined to provide details. Fr. Drew nervously rambled and stated he borrowed Fr. Dave’s truck to move his property from St. Ignatius to his residence. He indicated he put some of his personal property at Western Hills Public Storage. Fr. Drew agreed to schedule an interview with us the following day,” Jones wrote in her report.
“In a way, I'm kind of grateful you're here because this is the first time I am being afforded the opportunity … to tell my side of the story,” Drew told police in an audio recording. “Which is more than what I've gotten from the archdiocese.”
The next day Drew’s attorney, Brad Moermond, called police to cancel the interview.
But plenty of others did want to speak to police.
Over the next few weeks, police interviewed former students, fellow priests and past parishioners from the churches and schools where Drew had worked since the 1980s.
“A couple of times I observed him … crossing the boundaries inappropriately, basically going up to minors, servers and the like, both hands on either shoulder and kind of a prolonged shoulder massage kind of thing,” said an unidentified priest who spoke to police about his experience at St. Jude in 1992 and 1993, when Drew was the music director.
Years later, that priest said he was asked to write a reference letter for Drew in 1999 for admission to the seminary.
“In that letter … I'm almost absolutely 100% confident that I put in a line that says, ‘I have to express a concern that I observed him crossing boundaries and that I did address that with him,’” the priest told Jones. “And that would have gone either to the vocation office or the seminary at that time.”
But an archdiocese spokesperson told WCPO after Drew's 2019 arrest, "There's no documentation that there's problems before he goes into the priesthood."
But that wasn’t the only complaint made to the seminary.
A former parishioner at St. Anthony Church in Madisonville, who was not identified by police, told Jones that she walked in on a shocking site while watering flowers one Sunday morning during a break between masses. Drew worked as an intern there in 2001 and 2002 while he was studying at the seminary.
“Geoff Drew putting his hands on the shoulders of a 16-year-old boy like massaging his shoulders, whispering in his ear," she told Jones in a recorded call. “It shocked me. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
She later saw the same boy on a tour with Drew at the seminary.
When Jones spoke to that teenage boy, who was an adult in September 2019, he said Drew took him into his private room at the seminary that day. A man, seeing that they were alone together in the room, approached the doorway and refused to leave until he and Drew exited.
“Now I had enough of this behavior. I know enough about what grooming means to know this is not good,” she told Jones.
“So I went to the director of interns at the time, which was Father Mike Savino and said, I, how do I file a complaint here? This doesn't look right to me. So I had it written up. There was like some kind of hearing. I talked to a dean at the time who was Father Jeff Kemper. I don’t think it went any place,” she told Jones.
“When all this crap broke, I called the Chancellor, Steve Angi and said, 'What I just told you, that I reported him, OK,'” she told Jones. “And he goes, well, we don't get the files from the seminary.”
When contacted by WCPO, the woman said she reported Drew to the formation team at Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary in May 2002.
Two other priests also spoke to Jones about their concerns.
One priest, who was not identified by police, said sometime between 1987 and 1992 when he was pastor of a nearby church, he attended a meeting at St. Jude where Drew was music minister.
“When he walked outside, he saw Mr. Drew with four or five boys. He estimated the boys were probably high school age. He saw them loading a light-colored station wagon … Drew stated, ‘I’m going on vacation … We have a good time … we’ve done it before,’” Jones wrote in her report.
That priest had seen Drew rub children on their shoulders and referred to him as “creepy,” according to her report.
A third unidentified priest, who worked at St. Jude and St. Aloysius in 2000 and 2001, called Jones the day after Drew’s arrest to reveal a “plaguing” memory.
The priest said he was invited to a backyard dinner with a parish family after Drew had left the parish. Their son, who was a high school sophomore, announced, “that he hated the Catholic Church and I being the new parish priest, I’m like, ‘Well why,’” he told Jones.
“Geoff Drew and another adult male took this boy and another schoolmate of his on some kind of overnight trip and gave them so much alcohol that they blacked out. Now, that was a red flag for me,” the priest told Jones.
He didn’t know what to do, he said, because the boy’s mother laughed about the experience, so there was no complaining witness: “I was not in a position where I could do anything,” he told Jones.
A second victim, but no criminal charges
A 45-year-old man was sitting at a bar after work on Aug. 19, 2019, when he saw a story about Drew’s arrest on television.
“I was like, oh my God, nine counts … and I damn near cried right there,” the man told police.
He said his own experience with Drew, “was never going to come out,” until he saw that story. He asked his girlfriend to pick him up from the bar, and in tears, told her about his abuse for the first time, according to his police interview.
A day later, on Aug. 20, 2019, he called the Hamilton County prosecutor’s office and left a voicemail message that the “same stuff” that happened to Neyer, had happened to him.
Jones and Green Township Police Detective James Conforti picked up the man, who is not identified in police records, from his home on Aug. 31, because he needed a ride and had missed a scheduled interview a few days prior.
During the interview, he was extremely nervous, said he felt “humiliated,” had difficulty staying on topic, and wanted to end the interview as quickly as possible, Jones wrote in her report.
“The man molested me. All right, he put his hands down my pants, and he played with himself and that's it. And that's all I got to say,” he told police in a recorded interview.
In 1984, he was in fifth or sixth grade at St. Jude and serving as an altar boy at 5:30 a.m. masses. Drew had just arrived as the parish’s new music director.
He believed that he was Drew’s first victim, with the abuse occurring repeatedly in the church undercroft.
“I've been drinking ever since, you know, I'm a total raging alcoholic,” he said in the recorded interview. “I've been in trouble with the law and everything else and only because of my drinking. And I've been drinking ever since that point in time, just to let you know.”
The victim eventually covered his face with his hands, began to sob, and asked to end the interview, Jones wrote in her report.
He met with detectives again on Nov. 21, 2019.
He described how the abuse progressed from Drew rubbing his crotch against his side, to touching on top of and then underneath his clothes, and eventually Drew taking his penis out of his pants, according to Jones’ report.
Drew performed oral sex on him several times, he said, at least once when he was standing next to Drew’s open car door in the school parking lot, according to Jones’ report
“As it did during his first interview, it appeared (he) was withholding details of what occurred. He asked if he could come back at another time to share the rest of his story. He mentioned that speaking with 'the other victim' might help him to 'open up,' Jones wrote in the report.
Detectives asked Neyer to call the second victim, and he did, encouraging him to be open, and praying for him.
The second victim agreed to talk more later but then stopped returning calls from police.
Prosecutors said they could not file criminal charges because the statute of limitations had expired. But the second victim was scheduled to testify at Drew's trial to show that he had a pattern of sexual abuse.
“That witness/victim did agree to testify, but shortly before trial he disappeared on us, and we were not able to locate him. He never contacted us even though he knew the trial date and had told us he would appear and testify,” Piepmeier said in a statement to WCPO.
Former student: 'This situation could have been avoided, had people spoken up.'
Many other St. Jude students spoke to police about how uncomfortable Drew made them feel as children, some expressing frustration that no adults intervened.
“This guy, I mean, I believe that he's a pedophile, in my opinion,” said a former student at St. Jude from 1990 to 1998, in a call with Jones in August 2019. “He would, you know, kind of take his hand and … start rubbing our shoulders a little bit, you know, it might have been a matter of, you know, five, 10 seconds, but sometimes basically sliding his hand underneath my shirt, touching my skin and like rubbing my back.”
“I remember this happening and like the hallway, even outside of the main principal office, the secretary’s office at Saint Jude,” he said.
Another student who also attended St. Jude from 1990 to 1998, described the same unwanted touching from Drew.
“This should have been dealt with a long time ago and I hate to say it, but this situation could have been avoided, had people spoken up,” the former St. Jude student said. “Somebody had to know something, right?”
Jones also spoke to a former St. Jude student who graduated in 1987 and went to Elder High School, where Drew was assistant band director.
During his sophomore year at Elder, he said Drew rented a conversion van to take him and four other 15-year-old boys to Chicago where they saw a Broadway show and shared a hotel room. He said the boys went to an inappropriate comedy show, ordered “soft porn” on the hotel television and tried to order alcohol without Drew stopping them.
Another Elder band student from 1988 to 1990, told Jones, “I was groomed by Drew.”
In 1990, when he was 14 or 15, Drew invited him to his home and he assumed that other band students would be there.
“I get there, and he takes me to his basement and I am still thinking, OK, well, everybody is going to be here or they are going to show up after me,” the former Elder student said. “It was just me and him in a very cold, dark basement and I immediately felt uncomfortable, and I was like, 'Oh, this is not right. He's up to something' … because we always kind of knew he was a little funny.”
He called his grandfather to come and pick him up, despite Drew urging him to stay for dinner and that he would drive him home later.
"Mr. Drew came back downstairs and ... he asked me to come over to the couch, 'You sit down next to me on the couch,'" he said. "It's like, 'No, Mr. Drew, my grandfather was coming to get me.'"
In the spring of 1990, Elder High School band director Steve Geis called all the band students into a room and asked them to write a letter expressing any complaints they had with Drew, the former student said.
“I wanted them to express how they felt so I could take it to the principal,” Geis, who is now retired, told WCPO.
He heard from kids that Drew would go on trips with them, noting there was no Child Protection Decree back then. He also saw Drew touch students on their shoulders but didn’t think it was unusual because other teachers did too.
Students did not like Drew; band participation dropped from 80 to 90 kids down to 28 at its lowest point, Geis said.
“I went to Father (Jerome) Schaeper, who was the principal, and said I can’t have him,” said Geis, who brought the student complaint letters to him, but said he didn’t read them himself.
Afterward, the principal removed Drew from band and made him monitor study halls until he quit a few months later, Geis said.
The complaints about Drew continued at the former St. Rita Catholic School in Dayton.
A former St. Rita’s student in 2005 told Jones that all eighth grade boys typed up a letter asking Drew to stop touching them, and signed their names to it.
“We wanted him to stop physically touching us,” the former St. Rita student said. “Basically, he was coming into class like every day … and like massaging us, like rubbing his face on our faces and like sticking his hands in our ears and massaging our shoulders and saying weird comments and stuff like that.”
“We tried to tell the adults to like help, but they didn't,” the student said. “I remember just that they told us we were being ridiculous, and I think we might even have to write like an apology letter, but they definitely just told us to stop bringing it up.”
Kathleen Shanahan is a former parish leader at St. Rita’s who said she remembered the letter the boys wrote to Drew during the 2005-2006 school year after he first arrived.
“He instituted a policy where he had students come in one by one at the rectory to get their report cards and meet with him,” Shanahan said. “But he only paid attention to boys.”
On Feb. 12, 2008, an intake worker at Montgomery County Job & Family Services got a call about Drew and a 14-year-old male student at St. Rita’s.
“Caller is reporting that they received an e-mail about Father Geoff Drew, the priest at St. Rita’s Church … Drew cups his hands, holds his cupped hands out, and asks the children to put their face in his hands when he is talking … Drew did this on 2/6/08 in the middle of the school library with other staff and students around with a 14yo … (who) said no, he didn’t want to do that, that it made him feel uncomfortable … in the email the author describes this action as sexual harassment and that it needs to stop. The archdiocese office will be investigating the matter further, with Father Drew and the principal of St. Rita’s,” according to the intake report, obtained by WCPO through a public records request.
Father Binzer was listed as the reporter of this incident to JFS, on the intake report.
Did the Vatican ever investigate the Archdiocese of Cincinnati?
Archdiocese leaders held a rare press conference on Aug. 5, 2019, to say they made “serious mistakes” in responding to parishioners' concerns about Drew’s behavior over the years.
A news release said the archdiocese central office received concerns from St. Maximillian Kolbe parishioners about Drew in 2013, 2015 and 2018, which were turned over to the Butler County prosecutor who found no evidence of a crime.
But no mention was made of any complaint or concern about Drew in the years before 2013.
A spokesperson back then said Archbishop Dennis Schnurr was not aware of Drew's conduct until August 2018, when he read a letter that was addressed to him personally and later forwarded to Butler County Prosecutor Mike Gmoser.
The spokesperson said Binzer knew about the allegations against Drew since 2013, but he didn't share that information with Schnurr.
Days later, Gmoser blasted archdiocese leaders for failing to actively monitor Drew, after he told them in September 2018 that he should be supervised based on allegations that he touched and communicated with teenage boys in a sexually suggestive manner.
Soon after, Schnurr submitted a “full report” on Drew’s case to the Vatican via the apostolic nuncio — a diplomat who functions as an ambassador for the Catholic Church — in Washington, D.C., with the expectation of a full investigation into how the archdiocese handled the Drew case.
Five years later, WCPO asked if a Vatican investigation ever occurred. Spokesperson Jennifer Schack responded with this statement:
On Aug. 30, 2019, a comprehensive report on the archdiocese’s handling of the Geoff Drew matter was sent to the Apostolic Nunciature in Washington D.C. and a copy was then forwarded to the Holy See in Rome. The Holy See studied the matter further. You would need to follow up with the Holy See for any additional information.
WCPO did not receive a response from the Apostolic Nunciature and the Holy See in Rome.
Meanwhile, Teresa Dinwiddie-Herrmann and Rebecca Surendorff, co-founders of Ohioans for Child Protection, are still waiting for any response from the Vatican.
They are two of the 1,500 local Catholics who signed a petition asking the Vatican for an investigation into how the archdiocese handled Drew’s case.
“We’ve never received any kind of communication,” Surendorff said. “The Vatican itself has not communicated to any of the Catholics here in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati regarding an investigation, and there is no apparent outcome.”
When Drew is released from prison in August 2026, he must register as a sex offender, but the archdiocese will no longer monitor him because he was laicized in November 2023.
“Geoff Drew … is a layman with no reporting relationship to the archbishop or pastoral center of the archdiocese. He may no longer present himself as a Catholic priest,” Schack wrote in a statement to WCPO.
That worries attorney Konrad Kircher.
“Once they are out of ministry the archdiocese doesn’t keep tabs on them,” Kircher said. “The archdiocese doesn’t feel that they have duty to warn communities where these folks end up.”
Meanwhile, Jones and others worry that Drew will continue to molest children when he is released from prison.
“I have a great fear that Drew will re-offend upon his release. Drew has been abusing boys and young men for years. It is who he is. Evidence supports he was grooming young males for many years and even around the time of his arrest. He may have been convicted of sexually abusing one boy, but I’m confident others are out there,” Jones said.
Even Deters said during his August 2019 press conference on Drew that pedophilia, “It’s not something you can be cured from … and it would not surprise me if he has other victims out there.”
As for Neyer, who did not respond to a request for an interview, he talked about the outcome he hoped for during his 2019 interview with Jones.
“Do I foresee the church doing anything to him, no. Do I see the court? That’s where my hope is,” Neyer said in the police recording.
“Mine too,” Jones said.
Note: When WCPO asked Schack if the archdiocese is concerned that there may be other victims of Drew’s abuse, she gave this response:
“Any victim of abuse is always encouraged to come forward. In addition, if anyone suspects abuse on the part of any agent of the archdiocese, please report it to the appropriate law enforcement agency, as well as through the Report Misconduct link on catholicaoc.org website. If you see something, please say something.”
