KENT COUNTY, Mich. — A West Michigan counselor who served as a parent and foster parent to more than 20 children, and mentored many more, pleaded guilty Wednesday to engaging in inappropriate sexual activity with a former mentee.
Jeffrey Marchione, 47, pleaded guilty to third-degree criminal sexual conduct in 17th Circuit Court.
This guilty plea on the local level is part of an agreement Marchione made on the federal level.
On Nov. 26 he told a judge that 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.
Because he admitted to those crimes, federal prosecutors dropped a fourth charge of advertising material involving sexual exploitation of children.
In a federal indictment filed in June, federal officials alleged that they had discovered tens of thousands of child porn images on Marchione’s computer. They also claimed he had a 150-page manifesto that shows how to find and molest a child without the child telling anyone about it.
“The document instructs people, specifically men, to become mentors, coaches or counselors in their local community to find a child to molest,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Tessa Hessmiller wrote in the indictment following the molestation charges.
