JCC Camp Counselor Gets 10 Years for Child Porn
Matthew Kuppe, 22, has pleaded guilty to distributing child pornography. Image by Facebook
By Aiden Pink April 19, 2017
A former camp counselor at the Jewish Community Center of Metropolitan Detroit was sentenced to 10 years in prison last week for taking nude photos of his campers in a locker room and posting them on a website frequented by Russian pedophiles.
Matthew Kuppe, age 22, pleaded guilty to distributing child pornography. The presiding judge, Avern Cohn, approved the deal, but criticized it as too harsh, noting that Kuppe had no prior criminal record and that there was no evidence that he had molested any of his campers.
Kuppe was arrested in August 2014 after investigators found his web posts, which contained photos of his campers, aged five to seven, and identified one of them by name.
“We found we were left with so many more questions than answers,” a parent wrote in their victim impact statement. “Did our son experience abuse? How will this impact him? How will we ever really know what happened to our son at camp that summer?”
Three JCC employees, including the camp director, were fired after it was revealed that they didn’t pass a coworker’s concerns about Kuppe to senior management.
Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter at @aidenpink.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Make a Passover Gift Today!
Dive In
-
Fast Forward FSU shooting suspect used neo-Nazi imagery on social media, ADL finds
-
Fast Forward Pope Francis’ final speech called for ceasefire and hostage release in Gaza war
-
Fast Forward Israeli army fires deputy commander after finding ‘operational errors’ in killing of 15 Gazans
-
Fast Forward ‘F–k Israel’ message displayed at Coachella music festival and streamed to millions
Most Popular
- 1
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
Fast Forward Suspected arsonist intended to beat Gov. Josh Shapiro with a sledgehammer, investigators say
- 4
Opinion What Jewish university presidents say: Trump is exploiting campus antisemitism, not fighting it
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward FSU shooting suspect used neo-Nazi imagery on social media, ADL finds
-
Fast Forward Pope Francis’ final speech called for ceasefire and hostage release in Gaza war
-
Opinion Shackled, imprisoned and subjected to false accusations, Kilmar Abrego Garcia recalls the fate of Captain Alfred Dreyfus
-
Opinion The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump’s ruthless grab for power
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.