COLUMBUS, Ohio — Child advocates and abuse survivors asked Ohio lawmakers on Wednesday to pass a new law to criminalize the sexual grooming of children, referencing some of WCPO’s reporting on two former Archdiocese of Cincinnati priests.
Former Dayton priest Tony Cutcher and former Cincinnati priest Geoff Drew were both mentioned during public testimony at the Ohio Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
“The messages begin innocently enough and then they take a dark turn,” said Ohioans for Child Protection co-founder Rebecca Surendorff, who showed lawmakers four binders containing hundreds of text messages that Cutcher exchanged with a 14-year-old boy.
“The priest starts to discuss sex acts with the child on multiple occasions. Any reasonable person can tell this was not sex ed, this was an adult manipulating a child for a purpose,” Surendorff said. “Our laws fell short again.”
Police never charged Cutcher with a crime.
Cutcher’s 22-year career in active ministry ended in 2021 after a scandal. He resigned as pastor of four churches and two schools north of Dayton, including St. Peter in Huber Heights and Our Lady of the Rosary.
St. Peter’s business manager and music director had reported him to the archdiocese for texting an eighth-grade male student for more than a year, leading into his freshman year of high school.
Some of the text messages include:
- “Just looking for an excuse to see you,” to which the child responds, “But you saw me yesterday.” Cutcher responds, “I know. It’s been over 24 hours!”
- “Wow. You are incredibly handsome.”
- “Are you all brown and tanned?”
- “I will miss you.”
- “How’s your love life?”
- “I really miss your office visits.”
- “I sure do miss talking to you.”
- “You were in my dream last night … It was one of those fun dreams … I’m a lot younger in my dreams.”
- “You have become quite important to me lately.”
- “You’re gonna need to send some selfies with your new clothes.”
- “I swear as soon as the weather breaks again I’m gonna bike ride over to your neighborhood.”
- “You need to come back now. I miss you already.”
- The child describes how his family is having takeout dinner from BJ’s to which Cutcher responds, “Oh the restaurant, I always think of something else when someone says BJ’s … I won’t tell you the thing but the second word is ‘job.’ (Think below the belt).”
When I asked Cutcher during a June interview if these texts were okay to send to a 14-year-old boy, he responded, “No.”
Surendorff also testified to lawmakers about Drew, the former pastor of St. Ignatius of Loyola in Green Township who pleaded guilty to raping an altar boy early in his career when he was a music minister at St. Jude.
“Father Geoff Drew began his career as a music minister at my elementary school where he was abusing little boys. He went on to become a priest despite documented concerns and his last assignment gave him superintendent-like power at St. Ignatius the largest Catholic in Ohio. My four kids were all students there at the time of Geoff Drew’s arrest,” Surendorff testified.
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 revealed 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.
“Drew’s 2019 arrest and 2021 conviction create a frightening picture of red flag sexual grooming behavior with minors over the course of three decades in three Ohio counties,” Surendorff testified.
Sixteen others who support the grooming bill also testified on Wednesday, either in person or by submitting written testimony including Child USA, Enough Abuse, Child USAdvocacy, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests and the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association.
Wood County Prosecuting Attorney Paul Dobson testified that lawmakers need to do more to protect children from sexual abuse.
“Describing sex acts to a child … talking to the child about things they should do to themselves … these are actually not violations of the law. Even when they’re coupled with clear intention to move that child toward sexual activity with the offender,” Dobson said.
Isolated innocent compliments from a teacher to a child are not considered grooming behavior, he said.
Instead, law enforcement looks for a pattern of behavior from adults: buying a child personal gifts such as jewelry, driving children home, discussing their intimate relations with others, talking about sex, telling a child how much they love them and saying they could have a relationship once the child is older.
“There’s no doubt to a reasonable person that the adult is working the child toward sex,” Dobson said. “Currently there is no law against this grooming process … This is intended to stop people before they do greater damage.”
Laura Gray, of Mentor, was one of several abuse survivors who testified about their sexual victimization as children by priests.
Gray said a priest raped her for years, beginning at a very young age, and that he groomed her family to get access to her.
“I have spent my entire life learning how to live, cope, heal and breathe after being repeatedly raped for years by this master groomer,” Gray said. “Grooming is the gateway to sexual abuse.”
Republican state Reps. Bill Seitz (Cincinnati) and Cindy Abrams (Harrison) introduced the grooming bill, House Bill 322, in late 2023, and it passed the House earlier this year.
Surendorff expects another Senate hearing on the bill next week. She hopes for a vote by the time the session ends later this month, or she said the entire process will restart in 2025.
“The Geoff Drew case is what led to the statute on grooming,” Seitz told WCPO in March. “Because folks were concerned that he was being passed around from parish to parish and up to no good to whichever parish he went.”
