A Catholic priest has staked out an early claim for Worst Person of 2017 by blaming his kiddie porn conviction on his crap poker skills.
On Friday, Rev. Kevin Gugliotta, who formerly worked at the Holy Spirit Roman Catholic Church in Union, New Jersey, was sentenced to just shy of two years in prison after pleading guilty in March to disseminating child pornography. Gugilotta was given credit for the 10 months he’s spent in custody awaiting sentencing.
The 55-year-old Gugliotta was arrested last October after he uploaded multiple images of boys as young as eight years old engaged in sexual activity from his vacation home in Pennsylvania.
Naturally, it was later revealed that Gugliotta was suspended from church activity in 2003 for molesting a teenage boy in the 1980s. However, Church officials in Newark quietly reinstated him the following year based on their reasoning that Gugliotta was a layman at the time of the offense. Well done, Catholics. Well done.
While Catholics are stereotypically associated with bingo, Gugilotta was more into poker. The Hendonmob database ranks Gugliotta as 4,530th on the United States All-Time Money List, and 215th on the New Jersey list.
According to pretrial records, Gugliotta told his probation officer that he uploaded the pornographic images to get “revenge” on God, whom Gugliotta believed was responsible for his inability to emerge from poker tournaments and cash games with money in his pocket.
The Associated Press quoted Gugliotta’s attorney saying his client now recognized that “there are other ways to handle issues and handle anger.” Amazingly, Church officials have still yet to determine whether Gugliotta will be defrocked, because it seems stealing money from the Vatican bank is the only truly guaranteed cause for dismissal.
In addition to his jail term, Gugliotta must serve five years of probation, during which time he will be prohibited from gambling. Quite apart from showing his face at an Atlantic City casino poker room, Gugliotta also won’t be able to gamble at a New Jersey-licensed online poker site, as probation officers have the right to examine his personal electronic devices at any time of their choosing.
Tune in next year, when Gugliotta blames God for ensuring that his new cellmate was a 300-pound Aryan Nation member named Bubba with an eight-year-old son at home, even if the Catholic faith doesn’t believe in karma.
