A former St. Louis County, Missouri teacher has admitted to possessing and producing child pornography using hidden cameras.
Joseph R. Gutowski, 42, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in St. Louis to one count of producing child pornography and one count of receiving child pornography.
Gutowski confessed to hiding cameras in his office at Lafayette High School in Wildwood and his home, secretly filming minors, and trading some of those images online, according to his plea agreement. He was a member of an underground child pornography group on Mega, a cloud storage service, and traded videos he had secretly recorded of an adult in the “Club Creep” group on Mega.
Gutowski attempted to delete child sexual abuse material from nearly all his electronic devices before they were seized by law enforcement, his plea states. He deleted 25,377 files from his Dropbox account alone.
Gutowski is scheduled to be sentenced on October 23, 2024. The production charge carries a potential penalty of 15 to 30 years (180 to 360 months) in prison, and the receiving charge carries a potential penalty of five to 20 years (60 to 240 months) in prison.
The FBI and the St. Louis County Police Department Special Investigations Unit investigated the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jillian Anderson is prosecuting the case.
