Former Teacher Sentenced to 20 Years in Prison for Producing Child Pornography with Hidden Cameras

ST. LOUIS - U.S. District Judge Henry E. Autrey on Wednesday sentenced a former St. Louis County, Missouri teacher to 20 years in prison for producing child pornography with hidden cameras.

Judge Autrey also ordered Joseph R. Gutowski to pay $86,500 in restitution to his victims, including those who appeared in the child sexual abuse material he collected.

Gutowski hid cameras in his office at Lafayette High School in Wildwood and in his home. He secretly filmed a minor and traded some of the images with others online. He was a member of an underground child pornography group on the cloud storage service Mega. He also traded videos he'd secretly recorded of an adult in the "Club Creep" group on Mega.

Gutowski, 42, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in St. Louis in July to one count of producing of child pornography and one count of receiving child pornography.

The FBI and the St. Louis County Police Department Special Investigations Unit investigated the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jillian Anderson prosecuted 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, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.