Pennsylvania court sentences child porn priest to eight years in prison

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Former Roman Catholic priest Bartley Sorensen of the US state of Pennsylvania was yesterday sentenced to eight years and one month in federal prison after pleading guilty to child pornography charges in May 2012.

Sorenson, now aged 63, was discovered to be downloading child pornography by an employee of his parish at the St. John Fisher Church in Churchill, Allegheny County in December 2011. The employee had been tutored on how to distinguish predators. Police investigating the case found some 5,000 child pornography images in Sorenson's church office.

Following Sorenson's release, he will also be supervised for five years. Sorenson has also been ordered to pay a fine of $25,000. He claimed that he wanted to be caught and left the image on his computer screen in order to be found out and required to go to counselling, but was unaware that it was illegal.

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Sources

James B. Kelleher. "Pennsylvania priest gets 8 years behind bars for child porn" — Reuters, January 2, 2013
Joe Mandak (Associated Press). "Suspended Pa. priest given 8-year prison sentence" — York Daily Record, January 2, 2013

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Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.