A former Rockwood School District teacher has admitted to using hidden cameras to record children, sharing the videos he recorded and collecting thousands of images of child sex abuse. The teacher hid cameras in his office at Lafayette High School and in his home, the U.S. District Attorney’s Office reported.
Jospeh R. Gutowski, 42, of St. Louis on Monday, July 22, pleaded guilty to producing child pornography and receiving child pornography in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 23, court records show.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office is recommending a sentence of 20 years in prison followed by lifetime supervised release and applicable assessments and restitution. However, Gutowski’s attorney may argue for a lesser sentence, according to the guilty plea agreement.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office reported the production charge carries a penalty of 15 to 30 years in prison, and the receiving charge is punishable by five to 20 years in prison.
Recently, several St. Louis County judges have ordered Gutowski to pay $14.5 million to six women and two girls who have sued him for secretly recording them and abuse. He also is being sued in St. Louis County by a woman and boy for recording them without their knowledge, according to court records.
Gutowski taught at Rockwood from August 2006 through December 2022. He was teaching at Lafayette High in Wildwood when he reported to school officials on Nov. 30, 2022, that he was engaged in inappropriate activities with students, the guilty plea agreement said.
When he was interviewed by police at the school that day, Gutowski said he was addicted to pornography and had viewed child pornography. He said obtained child porn through an internet site that had an “underground” section that was exclusively for pornography involving minors and voyeurism, according to the guilty plea.
Gutowski said he traded images of child pornography and videos he’d secretly recorded of an adult on Mega, a cloud storage service, the guilty plea said.
Before his arrest, Gutowski deleted 25,377 files containing child sexual abuse material from his DropBox, an online storage account. However, investigators found 340 images and 832 videos of child pornography on a different online storage account that he used, according to the guilty plea.
Gutowski was fired by Rockwood officials on Dec. 15, 2022. Board of Education members voted unanimously that night in a closed session to terminate his contract, the district reported.
Before that vote, the board unanimously voted to reject Gutowski’s resignation, Rockwood officials reported.
He was charged on Dec. 20, 2022, by the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office with sexual exploitation of a minor and possession of child pornography, both class B felonies punishable by to five to 15 years in prison, along with second-degree promoting child pornography, a class D felony that carries a penalty of up to seven years in prison, court records show. That case is still pending, according to court documents.
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.
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Department of Justice Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, visit justice.gov/psc.