New Jersey Priest Charged With Possessing And Disseminating Child Pornography In Pennsylvania

A New Jersey priest from a Catholic church was arrested and charged due to child pornography. He is now on a now-bail warrant in the Ocean County Jail.

The Catholic priest identified as 54-year-old Kevin A. Gugliotta. He is facing 40 counts of child pornography, 20 of which is for possession and the other half is for dissemination. He repatriated to Pennsylvania.

Gugliotta reportedly has a home in Mahwah, New Jersey and is a priest at Holy Spirit Roman Catholic Church in Union, New Jersey. Gugliotta was arrested and charged after the investigation that started in August this year showed that there was child pornography uploaded to an Internet chat room. They recovered a particular IP address, and it reportedly was registered under Gugliotta.

During that time, he was at his home in Lehigh Township, Pennsylvania. Gugliotta referred to his home in Pennsylvania as his day-off home, Patch reported.

Gugliotta was removed from his ministry position after he was arrested and charged, as per the statement of James Goodness, the vice chancellor and director of communications. Archbishop John J. Myers reportedly ordered the removal of Gugliotta from the ministry.

The statement from Goodness added, "Father's activities are alleged to have occurred in Pennsylvania, where he maintains a vacation home, using his personal laptop. There are no allegations that he may have engaged in similar activities in New Jersey."

A lawyer for Gugliotta said that the priest would vigorously defend himself. The device that Gugliotta allegedly used has not been recovered by the investigators yet, but they said that throughout their interview with him, he never denied possessing child pornography on his laptop computer. He also reportedly began to tear up, his mouth became dry, and became fidgety. These are the considered signs of deception, ABC 7 reported.

Aside from the child pornography allegations, Gugliotta also reportedly won $200,000 from the poker database The Hendon Mob.