Speaker 1: Topics featured in this episode may be disturbing to some listeners.
Speaker 1: Please take care while listening.
Speaker 2: He treated me so poorly, me and my mother unfair
Speaker 2: and it's rude and I don't want an ever.
Speaker 3: I'm asking for you to send him.
Speaker 1: I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal Episode four. Aveya.
Speaker 1: On our last episode, you heard the sentencing hearing for
Speaker 1: Jason Linton. He pled guilty to one count of sexual
Speaker 1: exploitation of a minor and two counts of voyeurism. His
Speaker 1: stepdaughter of Aya, made a plead to the judge to
Speaker 1: send him to prison. Would Jason go to jail or
Speaker 1: be set free? That decision was in the hands of
Speaker 1: Judge Mettler.
Speaker 4: Okay, thank you everyone for your input the thinking about
Speaker 4: this for a while. This is a tough one and
Speaker 4: that court makes decisions concerning sentencing. The court really is
Speaker 4: balancing ways in which the victim can be made whole, which, frankly,
Speaker 4: it's pretty unusual when the victim can truly.
Speaker 5: Be made whole.
Speaker 1: Rehabilitating that the bennet is an important factor.
Speaker 5: And then of course punishment chop pronography is a horrible thing,
Speaker 5: and a victimize is so many young girls on boys,
Speaker 5: and it's terrible, But the layers in charges here are
Speaker 5: really serious. The position of trust that you help with
Speaker 5: respect to your stepdaughter, violating.
Speaker 3: That in the way that you did.
Speaker 5: I agree with mister Sutton that they really take this
Speaker 5: case to a different lem and warrant some prey significant punishment.
Speaker 3: Okay, So for.
Speaker 5: The crown of sexual exploitation of mind or second three
Speaker 5: felony for what's going to pose a term of utest
Speaker 5: a prison not less than one for more than fifteen years,
Speaker 5: and for each town of lawyers in both class A
Speaker 5: Missioner Sport's going to pose a term in jail not
Speaker 5: to receive three hundred and sixty four days. Kort's going
Speaker 5: one of the two lawyers account on concurrence to one
Speaker 5: that are consecutive to the prison Sertens imposed on the
Speaker 5: sexual exploitation from minor account. And on the second and
Speaker 5: three felony, Qurt's going to suspend that sentence and placed
Speaker 5: mister Lynn on formation for forty eight months to be supervised.
Speaker 3: By AP and P.
Speaker 1: To put it simply, Jason got less than a year
Speaker 1: of jail time for both voyeurism charges and would need
Speaker 1: to register as a sex offender less than one year.
Speaker 1: How is that even possible? I really thought this type
Speaker 1: of crime carried a hefty prison sentence, but that's not
Speaker 1: the case. We'll get into that later on in the episode.
Speaker 1: Not to mention the one to fifteen year sentence for
Speaker 1: sexual exploitation of a minor, It was suspended, meaning he
Speaker 1: wouldn't need to serve it if he doesn't violate probation.
Speaker 1: After Judge Metler rendered her sentence, an officer came and
Speaker 1: handcuffed Jason. He was going immediately to Salt Lake County Jail.
Speaker 1: Now Avea, the victim of his voyeurism, could start to
Speaker 1: catch her breath and not fear seeing him out and about,
Speaker 1: and Ashley could really start to rebuild, but nothing would
Speaker 1: be the same as before Jason was arrested. We wanted
Speaker 1: to see how Avea was doing after Jason was sentenced,
Speaker 1: so about a month after the hearing, I met Ashley
Speaker 1: and Avea at home in Riverton. Do you guys mind
Speaker 1: just talking into the microphones just so we can do
Speaker 1: some level checks?
Speaker 3: Okay, your turn, but.
Speaker 6: Great.
Speaker 1: It was really nice to meet a via face to face.
Speaker 1: She is Ashley's mini me, though she's taller than her mom,
Speaker 1: but everyone is taller than Ashley. What struck me about
Speaker 1: Avea was her confidence and her maturity. She seemed wise
Speaker 1: beyond her years. And I just wanted to remind you
Speaker 1: that her court sponsored therapist supported her participation in the podcast,
Speaker 1: and she was open with her feelings starting with Jason's
Speaker 1: sentencing hearing. So Avea, when I talked to your mom
Speaker 1: a few months before the sentencing hearing, she didn't think
Speaker 1: you would go to court, but it looks like you
Speaker 1: changed your mind. Why.
Speaker 3: I'd really thought about it, and so when I went
Speaker 3: in there, I had a whole bunch of things that
Speaker 3: I wanted to say to the judge and Jason, and
Speaker 3: I wanted to at least try and make an impact
Speaker 3: on it. I didn't want to be just like a bystander,
Speaker 3: don't want to just do nothing. Before he got locked up,
Speaker 3: I'd be laying in bed some nights and I'd just
Speaker 3: sit there thinking, like, you have no one's out there.
Speaker 3: You know, someone's looking, someone's creeping, Like you get that feeling,
Speaker 3: you know, But ever since he's got locked up, I
Speaker 3: don't had that feeling.
Speaker 1: I'm really happy you haven't had that feeling. Because that
Speaker 1: must have been really scary. It's hard to imagine not
Speaker 1: feeling safe in your own home. And I really don't
Speaker 1: know how you processed and navigated that as a teenager.
Speaker 3: None of us knew how to express our emotions because
Speaker 3: we were all so sad. But we were all like
Speaker 3: so upset about what had happened, and we still loved him. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we still loved him, like we felt like it was
Speaker 3: wrong too, because we were like, we were like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: he was our dad, like he was my dad, Like
Speaker 3: I loved him, like I loved the guy that he was.
Speaker 5: But like, I don't know who this is it.
Speaker 3: I'd put in so much trust into him because my
Speaker 3: dad wasn't there, and so he had taken on that
Speaker 3: role being my dad. So I had trusted him so
Speaker 3: much and I had really let him into my life.
Speaker 3: And I was just morely mad though that he had
Speaker 3: torn up our family. He had broke our family, and
Speaker 3: he had you know, hurt my mom and my brother
Speaker 3: and my sister, and what he did to me, I
Speaker 3: was definitely I was pretty heard about.
Speaker 1: A lot of your family members mentioned to me that
Speaker 1: you were a serious soccer player, but this whole experience
Speaker 1: just made competing impossible.
Speaker 3: What happened there at ourself. You have to have good
Speaker 3: grades to be on the team no matter what, and
Speaker 3: you can't miss more than two days of school, Like
Speaker 3: there's some new rules and things like that. And if
Speaker 3: you're going to an athletic school, you're going to be
Speaker 3: around some concaast people all day.
Speaker 6: But there was some cool people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, yeah there was. There are some pretty
Speaker 3: awesome people there. But can to get dressed up every day?
Speaker 5: You know that?
Speaker 3: That was really hard for me, And so I was
Speaker 3: so overwhelmed with everything that I just I didn't want
Speaker 3: to be around people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounds to me like you just needed a breather.
Speaker 1: So you switched to an alternative school. And just to
Speaker 1: be clear for people listening and just to make sure
Speaker 1: I'm understanding it right, all that means is it's a
Speaker 1: school that educates kids differently than a typical public school. Actually,
Speaker 1: I know you had a lot of dreams pinned up
Speaker 1: on a vea soccer. Were you on board with her leaving?
Speaker 1: Was that hard for you?
Speaker 6: I mean we definitely struggled your whole life. We've had
Speaker 6: like this one plan soccer scholarships, California, California. But I
Speaker 6: guess that I'm hearing and I didn't realize. I mean,
Speaker 6: you don't want to be around all those people. And
Speaker 6: then they knew this awful secret.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 6: It wasn't just like one thing, it was kind of
Speaker 6: all of it was so piled up on.
Speaker 3: You that Yeah. Yeah, definitely. The reason why I wanted
Speaker 3: to go to Valley was it was a way better
Speaker 3: alternative for me. I was succeeding a lot more. I
Speaker 3: was on on a roll. When you go to an
Speaker 3: alternative school, too, people are there to get their shit done.
Speaker 3: Like there's people that are there that have kids and
Speaker 3: they're sitting in the day Like we have a daycare
Speaker 3: at our school too, Like we'll have people that have kids,
Speaker 3: they go and do some homework. You could show up
Speaker 3: with the messy button, your hair and all makeup. No
Speaker 3: one would care. That's another reason why I really like
Speaker 3: Vallet too, is because it's like a really not judge
Speaker 3: mental area.
Speaker 6: I kind of felt like I just had to trust
Speaker 6: what you were doing, even if I didn't think it
Speaker 6: was like best choice. You know, Like I wanted you
Speaker 6: to play soccer and you're beast. Yeah, you're amazing on
Speaker 6: the field. Yeah, you know, and I get that, Like
Speaker 6: your passion for it's not there anymore.
Speaker 3: I get it.
Speaker 1: And you also have a job, right.
Speaker 3: I work at a daycare. I'm an opener, so I
Speaker 3: get there at six o'clock in the morning and I
Speaker 3: basically watch kids from the age five months all the
Speaker 3: way up to like ten years old. And yeah, I
Speaker 3: love it. I love my job.
Speaker 1: Why did you want to participate in this project?
Speaker 3: So when my mother had first told me about this project,
Speaker 3: I kind of was like, what is she? Like she's crazy,
Speaker 3: like she has lost her mind, like something is wrong
Speaker 3: with her, Like she is seriously batshit crazy. She thinks
Speaker 3: that she's getting on a damn podcast. And so when
Speaker 3: she had finally started getting into depth with everything, I
Speaker 3: was actually thought that it was really cool. I want
Speaker 3: to be able to impact other people. I want to
Speaker 3: be able to talk to other people, let other people
Speaker 3: know that, like, they're not alone in these kinds of situations,
Speaker 3: and that I know exactly how they feel. It's okay
Speaker 3: to not be okay for a minute, and that eventually
Speaker 3: you're going to get back up on your feet. There
Speaker 3: may be road bumps, but I definitely get back up
Speaker 3: on your feet.
Speaker 1: You know, Ashley, I know you wrote into us on
Speaker 1: a very bad day, but Avea. I think there are
Speaker 1: two reasons your mom wanted to do this, put her
Speaker 1: life out in public, share her story. One is to
Speaker 1: look for a community because we know this is happening
Speaker 1: in a lot of other homes, but also because she
Speaker 1: wants to let you know some things.
Speaker 6: Right after it happened and Jason went to jail, that
Speaker 6: whole first month was kind of a blur, I feel
Speaker 6: like for.
Speaker 3: All of us. Yeah, I definitely was.
Speaker 6: But after he got out of jail, do you remember
Speaker 6: remember me going over to his grandpa's house to see him?
Speaker 3: What did you think about?
Speaker 5: That?
Speaker 3: Just kind of frustrated me. How does didn't understand?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 6: I think looking back on that time, there's a couple
Speaker 6: of things that I wish I would have done differently,
Speaker 6: but I didn't. And one of those things is, you know,
Speaker 6: when he got out, I kind of switched back into
Speaker 6: WiFi mode.
Speaker 1: And just for clarity, Ashley, you're talking about after Jason
Speaker 1: was arrested and then released, before he pled guilty, so
Speaker 1: before the sentencing, hear right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I was trying to manage our family you know,
Speaker 6: you and your brother and sister less still be his wife.
Speaker 6: And even like with everything that happened, there wasn't a
Speaker 6: lot of people in like your corner when we should
Speaker 6: have been when we found out that this happened, we
Speaker 6: should have cocooned around you. It wasn't your job to
Speaker 6: step up and be MANI mom, while I was having
Speaker 6: a meltdown. That wasn't your job. And I think us
Speaker 6: not doing that pushed you away. And I'm so sorry
Speaker 6: that wasn't fair to you.
Speaker 3: That was why I went stayed with my dad. It
Speaker 3: was the only one that was really in my corner.
Speaker 3: He was lonely. It was the only one that really
Speaker 3: stood up. And I are you okay, No, That's why
Speaker 3: I stayed there. And at the beginning of all this too,
Speaker 3: it was all such like a big like shock to
Speaker 3: all of us.
Speaker 6: It's not a good excuse though.
Speaker 3: But no, like the thing is too, I really don't
Speaker 3: remember like everything you know. I'm telling you right now. Mom,
Speaker 3: I'm like we were all in shock, Like everyone had
Speaker 3: to write to be in shock in that situation, and
Speaker 3: you were definitely in shock, and I was too. I'm
Speaker 3: not mad at you, I'm really I'm really not mad
Speaker 3: at you.
Speaker 6: Maybe you're not right now, well maybe someday you might be.
Speaker 3: Though maybe someday I might will be. But also maybe
Speaker 3: a point where I'm not ever going to be mad
Speaker 3: at you, Like this is not your fault. I'm telling you,
Speaker 3: like from this point right now, like in my life,
Speaker 3: like i am not mad at my mother whatsoever. Like
Speaker 3: I'm beyond proud of my mother, beyond anything. I love you.
Speaker 3: I love you, yeah forever.
Speaker 1: At the beginning of the series, I told you that
Speaker 1: we had received several letters about families being destroyed because
Speaker 1: the husband was looking at illegal images of children online
Speaker 1: like Jason, and I will freely admit, before we really investigated,
Speaker 1: I assumed these offenders are put away for a long time.
Speaker 1: I really thought the law threw the book at them
Speaker 1: they were off the street. But when I met Ashley
Speaker 1: and other women who reached out, I learned that isn't
Speaker 1: necessarily the case. Even as I record this episode, Jason
Speaker 1: is halfway through his sentence and will be out in
Speaker 1: the community in the not too distant future. And you
Speaker 1: might be asking yourself, why should I care? Jason Litton.
Speaker 1: Isn't my husband or my son or my brother. Here's
Speaker 1: why you should care. There aren't enough prisons in the
Speaker 1: world to hold all the people who are looking at
Speaker 1: this material. It's insane. These offenders are in your neighborhood
Speaker 1: and mine. They are blue collar, white collar doctors, lawyers,
Speaker 1: construction workers, teachers, clergy, police officers. They encompass every walk
Speaker 1: of life. I didn't realize how uninformed I was on
Speaker 1: this topic. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
Speaker 1: received over twenty nine million tips just last year alone
Speaker 1: from online companies like Facebook, Google and others that detect
Speaker 1: these images. And here's something else I learned. Even the
Speaker 1: words child pornography are a problem. As I reached out
Speaker 1: to law enforcement and talked with people who work with victims,
Speaker 1: I discovered that they use the term child sexual abuse material.
Speaker 1: So why haven't I heard this term before? Probably because
Speaker 1: it's not in the media. It's not good clickbait. A
Speaker 1: headline that says local coach arrested for child porn is
Speaker 1: going to get a lot more attraction than local coach
Speaker 1: arrested for child sexual abuse material. Just the way it is.
Speaker 1: But here's why it matters to victims. Online pornography usually
Speaker 1: refers to adults who have consented to be filmed, but
Speaker 1: that's never the case. When the images depict children, it
Speaker 1: is abuse. These are pictures of crimes that have already
Speaker 1: been committed. Children can't legally consent to sex, they can't
Speaker 1: consent to having images of their abuse recorded and distributed.
Speaker 1: So child sexual abuse material is a more accurate description,
Speaker 1: but it's also a mouthful. So often the term sesam
Speaker 1: is used for short. Look, no one ever imagines that
Speaker 1: someone they love would do this. I feel for victims
Speaker 1: like a vea. I feel for mothers and wives just
Speaker 1: like Ashley. I feel for anyone whose life is upended
Speaker 1: by discovering a family member is involved. So I really
Speaker 1: wanted to know why is seesam so prevalent and lurking
Speaker 1: under the radar, and what is law enforcement and the
Speaker 1: justice system up against to keep families like Ashley's safe.
Speaker 7: In the nineties, child sexual abuse reports were predominantly handled.
Speaker 1: By the US Postal Service, who.
Speaker 7: Was responsible for intercepting things like magazines and that type
Speaker 7: of contraband that would be sent around.
Speaker 1: That's Gabriel Dance. He is a reporter for the New
Speaker 1: York Times, and in twenty nineteen he and his colleague
Speaker 1: Michael Keller published a groundbreaking investigative series called Exploited, which
Speaker 1: documented how seesam has exploded along with the growth of
Speaker 1: the Internet and social media.
Speaker 7: What we know is that with the advent of cell
Speaker 7: phones and the Internet, there was both the opportunity to
Speaker 7: produce material much more easily and also the opportunity to
Speaker 7: distribute that material much more widely.
Speaker 1: The Internet also provided the opportunity for people with similar
Speaker 1: interests to get together, learn from each other, and create
Speaker 1: online clubs, which is fine when you're talking about baking
Speaker 1: or car repair, but this is an underground that shares
Speaker 1: information on seesam how to acquire it, produce it, and
Speaker 1: hide it. Average citizens are downloading and viewing this material.
Speaker 1: Some states get three thousand cyber tips a day. New
Speaker 1: York Times reporter Michael Keller.
Speaker 9: One question that we heard a lot was, well, what's
Speaker 9: the big deal? They're just sharing images? Why is that
Speaker 9: so bad? Why should someone be punished for that? And
Speaker 9: in speaking with survivors of the abuse, we really understood
Speaker 9: that it is the ongoing trade in imagery that makes
Speaker 9: this that much more serious and harmful to the people involved.
Speaker 9: We spoke with two sisters synonymously who were abused by
Speaker 9: their father, who couldn't show their faces because there are
Speaker 9: people online trying to find them and track them down,
Speaker 9: and it prevents them from living a normal life. And
Speaker 9: that is due to the ongoing trade in the images
Speaker 9: well passed the actual abuse.
Speaker 7: These are people who have had one of the worst
Speaker 7: crimes you could possibly imagine, documented and shared for the
Speaker 7: pleasure of other people.
Speaker 1: Former Utah United States Attorney John Hubert.
Speaker 10: This goes on constantly, dozens upon hundreds of cases where
Speaker 10: you have these images and collections and trading images and
Speaker 10: bartering them like their baseball cards. And it's those run
Speaker 10: of the meal offenders that I am so concerned about
Speaker 10: because they're not getting the attention in court or according
Speaker 10: to state law that I believe they should. During my
Speaker 10: tenure as a United States attorney, we were getting some
Speaker 10: pushback from federal judges of why are you bringing these
Speaker 10: cases people looking at pictures? You know, what's the big deal?
Speaker 10: This is in federal court, And so we thought that
Speaker 10: was a misunderstanding and that we need to communicate better
Speaker 10: to the judges what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: You can probably imagine Ashley's surprised when she first learned
Speaker 1: what kind of justice Jason would be facing.
Speaker 6: The prosecutor made it sound like he's not going to
Speaker 6: go to prison and the most time that he's going
Speaker 6: to do.
Speaker 3: Is probably six months in jail.
Speaker 6: That was pretty normal for this type of events, and
Speaker 6: I'm like, are you kidding?
Speaker 1: The punishment just didn't seem to fit the crime. This
Speaker 1: doesn't just upset victims, it also demoralizes law enforcement. Riverton
Speaker 1: detective Jason Rue was one of the first who looked
Speaker 1: at the hidden file and had to view the evidence.
Speaker 8: It frustrates me, especially with these kind of crimes. It's
Speaker 8: a lifelong sentence for these victims, and not just the victim,
Speaker 8: but the victim's mom or the victim's dead or whoever
Speaker 8: else might know this in the family. And you're letting
Speaker 8: them out in six months to a year with probation
Speaker 8: for four That means basically someone's coming to check up
Speaker 8: on them every now and then asking if they're doing okay.
Speaker 1: And if you're waiting for the federal government to jump
Speaker 1: on the problem, don't hold your breath.
Speaker 9: We found systemic failures in responding to this rising problem,
Speaker 9: and one of the big things was the failures of
Speaker 9: the federal government to live up to its own promises
Speaker 9: that it made around two thousand and eight to develop
Speaker 9: a strong national response. That involved creating a high level
Speaker 9: position at the Department of Justice. It required analyzing the
Speaker 9: issue every few years and creating national strategy reports, and
Speaker 9: it required creating a funding mechanism for state and local
Speaker 9: investigators dedicated to doing these investigations. Who called Internet crimes
Speaker 9: against Children's task Forces. There's at least one in every state.
Speaker 9: And what we found was that the government had not
Speaker 9: really followed through on its grand plans. You know, these
Speaker 9: reports have risen, arrests have gone up slightly over the years,
Speaker 9: but federal funding to these special task forces has largely
Speaker 9: remained flat. The high goal position at DJ was never
Speaker 9: fully created. The strategy reports that were supposed to come
Speaker 9: out on a regular basis, there's only been two of
Speaker 9: them over the last decade. So we found failures not
Speaker 9: just with the tech companies, but also with the government
Speaker 9: to solve a problem that it's known about for over
Speaker 9: ten years.
Speaker 7: And as a response to our reporting, Senator Ron Wyden
Speaker 7: introduced a bill that was supposed to create nearly two
Speaker 7: hundred positions at federal law enforcement, allotting a total of
Speaker 7: five billion dollars over ten years to address exist exactly
Speaker 7: this problem. And as far as I know, that Bill's
Speaker 7: gone nowhere.
Speaker 1: So our elected officials in Washington aren't living up to
Speaker 1: their promises, and people like Ashley and the rest of
Speaker 1: us are here scratching our heads at a venders like
Speaker 1: Jason thinking you'll be out in months? Is that really okay?
Speaker 10: So in mister Litton's case, on paper, his crime of
Speaker 10: conviction carries a penalty of one to fifteen years in
Speaker 10: the Utah State Prison. Did he get that? No? And
Speaker 10: in lieu of that he was given days in jail
Speaker 10: and a term of probation.
Speaker 1: You probably remember that Jason's plea agreement tied the judge's
Speaker 1: hands pretty much. And while John Humer thinks the sentence
Speaker 1: fall short, he supports plea bargains, especially in cases like these.
Speaker 10: I think there's a public view that plea bargain is
Speaker 10: a bad word, that that's a sham and a shame,
Speaker 10: it's just a reality. But it is also true that
Speaker 10: in cases of child sexual abuse, that there is a
Speaker 10: reluctance to press every case to trial because what is
Speaker 10: the impact of calling a child witness to the stand
Speaker 10: to be asked questions in an open courtroom about such
Speaker 10: intimate victimization and what does that cost for a victim
Speaker 10: and their family?
Speaker 1: And at the time of sentencing, Sam argued vigorously for
Speaker 1: the most jail time possible considering the existing plea deal.
Speaker 11: In my opinion, that was one step beyond just the
Speaker 11: child pornography possession and just one step below and actual
Speaker 11: hands on sexual.
Speaker 4: Offense with a childbirth.
Speaker 11: And so it's obviously very concerning, it's extremely troubling behavior.
Speaker 11: And somebody in this defendant's position also by is what
Speaker 11: Utah law calls a position of special trust, and that's
Speaker 11: an aggravator under Utah law. And so I felt that
Speaker 11: this was a case where the judge should consider imposing
Speaker 11: a very significant amount of jail time.
Speaker 6: Er.
Speaker 1: But we also emphasize the overarching goal of the DA's
Speaker 1: office isn't just throwing offenders in jail.
Speaker 11: The systems interested not just in imprisoning offenders or putting
Speaker 11: people in custody and locking them away. You know, sometimes
Speaker 11: punishment for punishment's sake is appropriate, but the system generally
Speaker 11: tries to avoid that. In favor of rehabilitating people. We
Speaker 11: don't want this to happen again, So what does it
Speaker 11: take to do that. The end of the day, we're
Speaker 11: dealing with people's freedom, and we're dealing with the trauma
Speaker 11: that's been inflicted on victims, and the system can't go
Speaker 11: back and fix something that happened. But the system is
Speaker 11: often limited in what it can do. The system is
Speaker 11: designed very much to be limited because we don't want
Speaker 11: innocent people being convicted. The system balances that, and it's
Speaker 11: a group of people balancing imperfect questions and imperfect solutions
Speaker 11: and terrible situations.
Speaker 2: But not everyone agrees that is this hope and a
Speaker 2: prayer philosophy that he will change his ways in the
Speaker 2: days of probation and some days in jail, that he.
Speaker 10: Will not reoffend when he is released back into the community.
Speaker 10: That hope and a prayer is exactly what it ends
Speaker 10: up being. What about the community? What about his victims,
Speaker 10: the child victims who are violated by his conduct? How
Speaker 10: much does that cost to put that risk back on
Speaker 10: a family, that risk back on the community at large.
Speaker 10: What is the amount of money that it's worth if
Speaker 10: he does reoffend that in that one to fifteen years.
Speaker 10: He could have or should have been in the Utah
Speaker 10: State Prison. According to the laws of the state of Utah.
Speaker 8: He's not.
Speaker 10: He's out.
Speaker 1: Since Sam Sutton mentioned rehabilitation, I was curious about what
Speaker 1: kind of court mandated treatment was required of Jason or
Speaker 1: someone in Jason's position. This is important to me because
Speaker 1: I want to know what information Ashley will have and
Speaker 1: Aveyo will have. For example, how does one measure rehabilitation?
Speaker 1: How can one know if rehabilitation is successful? I think
Speaker 1: this is important to know when you need to make
Speaker 1: decisions to keep your kids in family safe. His court
Speaker 1: appointed attorney refuse to speak with us. In fact, no
Speaker 1: one in the Public Defender's Office would speak to our production,
Speaker 1: so we tried another avenue.
Speaker 12: So my name is Joel Kittrell and I'm a criminal
Speaker 12: defense lawyer based in Saltlake City, Utah.
Speaker 1: Joel spent five years in the Public Defender's Office before
Speaker 1: going into a private criminal defense practice. He explains what
Speaker 1: steps and programs returning citizens have to go through in
Speaker 1: order to enter back into society.
Speaker 12: Their therapy would include both individual psychotherapy, group therapy focusing
Speaker 12: on victim empathy, and then something that's interesting that a
Speaker 12: lot of people may not know is generally you've got
Speaker 12: to be able to pass polygraphs. While polygraphs aren't admissible
Speaker 12: in court. As we all know, you can't pass a
Speaker 12: polygraph that you haven't viewed child images or haven't acted
Speaker 12: on these impulses, then you may not finish the therapy
Speaker 12: classes that are required of you or the treatment that's
Speaker 12: required of you.
Speaker 13: You know, there'll be some type of overview with a
Speaker 13: dul probation and parole and his parole officer that will
Speaker 13: be making sure that he completes that. If he say
Speaker 13: just quits going or says this is not for me,
Speaker 13: then a warrant would likely issue and you would probably
Speaker 13: be sent to.
Speaker 1: Prison, and unfortunately, he would have lots of company. There
Speaker 1: will never be a shortage of people looking at child
Speaker 1: sexual abuse material because in the past twenty years, the
Speaker 1: problem has evolved to a place that is beyond epidemic.
Speaker 1: It's a public health crisis.
Speaker 7: We spoke with people who said that as early as
Speaker 7: two thousand, tech companies knew this was a very serious
Speaker 7: problem and we're doing nothing to solve it. Two thousand
Speaker 7: and nine, when they introduce scanning technology, we knew that
Speaker 7: it could be effective and helping stem the problem. Still,
Speaker 7: tech companies were not using it.
Speaker 9: I would say, if you talk with most technology policy people,
Speaker 9: their answer would be technology companies don't have that much
Speaker 9: pressure to get rid of harmful content on their platform.
Speaker 1: You can't sue them for what someone posts or sends
Speaker 1: through their platform.
Speaker 9: Section two thirty of the Communications Decency Act shields technology
Speaker 9: companies from any liability for content that users post, So.
Speaker 1: For now law enforcement has to rely on tips those
Speaker 1: companies give to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Speaker 1: But the tips from known social media sites are only
Speaker 1: part of the story. There are plenty of hidden places
Speaker 1: on the dark web defined ce SAM as well. Teams
Speaker 1: of detectives and child advocates are dedicated to finding these offenders. Amazing,
Speaker 1: wonderful people are cracking the codes of hidden websites on
Speaker 1: the dark Net and shutting them down, And one of
Speaker 1: the biggest and most dangerous of those came crashing down
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen. On the next episode of the trial,
Speaker 1: we'll meet a Utah wife and mother who found out
Speaker 1: her husband was one of its subscribers. I just started screaming.
Speaker 3: I remember just dropped to my knees and started screaming.
Speaker 1: And later on season two of Betrayal, another mom makes
Speaker 1: a daring escape.
Speaker 5: I packed that bag and I just got in the
Speaker 5: car and I went to the airport.
Speaker 1: If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal team,
Speaker 1: email us at Betrayal Pod at gmail dot com. That's
Speaker 1: Betrayal Pod at gmail dot com. To report a case
Speaker 1: of child sexual exploitation, called the National Center for Missing
Speaker 1: and Exploited Children's cyber Tipline at one eight hundred the Lost.
Speaker 1: If you or someone you know is worried about their
Speaker 1: sexual thoughts and feelings towards children, reach out to Stop
Speaker 1: It Now dot org. In the United Kingdom go to
Speaker 1: stop it Now dot org dot UK. These organizations can help.
Speaker 1: Are grateful for your support, and one way to show
Speaker 1: support is by subscribing to our show on Apple Podcasts
Speaker 1: and don't forget to rate and review Betrayal. Five star
Speaker 1: reviews go a long way. A big thank you to
Speaker 1: all of our listeners. Betrayal is a production of Glass Podcasts,
Speaker 1: a division of Glass Entertainment Group and partnership with iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1: The show was executive produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer
Speaker 1: Fason and produced by me Andrea Gunning. Written and produced
Speaker 1: by Kerry Hartman, also produced by Ben Fetterman Associate producer
Speaker 1: Kristin Melcurie. Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Jessica Crincheck.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to our talent Ashnate Litten. Audio editing and
Speaker 1: mixing by Matt Alvecchio. A trails theme composed by Oliver Bains.
Speaker 1: Music library provided by my Music and For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts,