GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Forty-seven-year-old Jeffrey Marchione of Alto had been a parent and foster parent to more than 20 children when the FBI said it found more than 42,000 images on his computers containing child porn.
He was also a licensed counselor with the state of Michigan, and was heavily involved as a mentor in the community.
The federal indictment came down in July alleging that Marchione had sent some of those thousands of images or documents containing child porn to people out of state.
He was also accused of sending a manifesto on how to molest young boys to someone through a computer message.
The indictment and resulting court documents said, “The document instructs people, specifically men, to become mentors, coaches or counselors in their local community to find a child to molest.”
“That chat history reveals that the Defendant told the person to whom he sent this document that he should become a Boy Scout leader or tutor to find a child to molest. The document instructs readers to begin their grooming and molestation when the child is approximately five years old.”
After those accusations came to light, court documents say he was accused of forcing oral sex on one of the teens he used to mentor.
Testimony in court previously indicated that the young man came forward while Marchione was locked up on the federal charges and talked about the alleged crime.
Documents said that the child said the abuse happened in Marchione’s home in Kent County’s Alto Township when he was between the ages of 13 and 15 years old.
When we tried to ask Marchione whether he was guilty of the porn and CSC charges against him a few months ago, he declined our interview from jail.
Although he wasn’t talking then, he had a lot to say in federal court Tuesday.
He told the judge he was guilty of having images of child porn on two laptops and a thumbnail drive and admitted to sending those images to people out of state through a peer-to-peer file sharing program called Gigatribe.
Because he admitted to those crimes, federal prosecutors dropped a fourth charge of advertising material involving sexual exploitation of children.
As part of the deal with the feds, he agreed to plead guilty to the third-degree CSC charge in Kent County involving the teen he once mentored.
A young man who was friends with the alleged victim said, “It sickened me hearing him plead guilty to the porn charges when the guy is a counselor.”
“I think the state needs to examine the process of getting a counseling license and who gets one and who doesn`t.”
Marchione is scheduled for federal sentencing in March.
As part of the plea deal, any state charges from the Kent County CSC case would run concurrent with the sentence in the federal pornography case.
If for some reason Marchione doesn’t follow through on the guilty plea in Kent County, the federal judge told him he would face all four charges in federal court and the deal with the prosecution would be nullified.
Tessa Hessmiller is the prosecutor from the US Attorney’s Office who is handling the case.
