A Pennsylvania coroner Feb. 4 confirmed the death of a former Strongsville priest who recently began serving a life sentence in prison for sex crimes.
Robert McWilliams, 41, a former seminarian at St. Helen’s Catholic Church in Newbury Township, was serving his sentence at Allenwood, a federal prison in Union County, Pennsylvania.
Union County Coroner Dominick Adamo confirmed that McWilliams had died, but declined to provide further details.
According to a news release from the prison, McWilliams was found unresponsive at 12:50 a.m. Feb. 4. Staff initiated life-saving measures and requested emergency medical services. McWilliams was transported to a local hospital and subsequently pronounced dead by hospital staff.
The FBI was notified, according to the news release. No staff or other inmates were injured, the release stated. McWilliams was at Allenwood since Jan. 31.
McWilliams was sentenced to life in prison Nov. 9, 2021, after previously pleading guilty to sex trafficking of a minor, three counts of sexual exploitation of a child, and one count each of transportation of child pornography, receipt and distribution of visual depiction of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct and possession of child pornography.
McWilliams on Dec. 22 filed a notice to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals he was appealing his sentence.
He was arrested Dec. 5, 2019, at St. Joseph in Strongsville after the Ohio Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force raided his office and living space. He was initially facing criminal charges in Cuyahoga and Geauga counties, but prosecutors in both counties dropped their cases after a federal complaint was filed Feb. 21, 2020.
From 2017 to 2019, McWilliams engaged in sexually explicit conduct involving minors, investigators say. McWilliams posed as women to entice the minor male victims to send him sexually explicit photographs and videos, sometimes threatening to expose embarrassing information.
He at times threatened to send those photos to family and friends if the minor victim did not send additional photos and videos, investigators say. McWilliams followed through on this threat by sending the mothers sexually explicit photographs he received from minor male victims.
He also used a social networking website to make contact with a minor male victim for the “purpose of engaging in commercial sex.” McWilliams allegedly met the victim on multiple occasions and, in exchange for sex, paid the victim for each act.
McWilliams was also in possession of, received or distributed approximately 1,700 images and videos of child pornography and approximately 150 files of child pornography in a cloud storage account, according to investigators.
The families of three of McWilliams’ victims are members of St. Helen’s parish. He came to the attention of the Geauga County Sheriff’s Office in October 2019, after two families from the parish filed a report detailing how their sons were extorted online for sexually explicit images of themselves, according to the prosecution’s sentencing memorandum.
In December, McWilliams was dismissed from the clerical state by Pope Francis.
