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Sean D. Reyes
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Beaver, Utah Man Sentenced to Jail in Child Pornography Case

June 17, 2020

A Beaver, Utah man was sentenced to jail yesterday after pleading guilty to four counts of Attempted Sexual Exploitation of a Minor.

Nathaniel Tyler Adams, 24, was sentenced to serve 364 days in the Beaver County Jail and will be placed on probation for 48 months upon his release, where he must abide by all the related conditions. Additionally, he must register as a sex offender and complete a sex offender treatment program.

Adams was first arrested in January 2020 following an investigation by the Utah Attorney General’s Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force. Investigators received a CyberTip reporting chat logs that appeared to be discussing arrangement for the sexual molestation of a user’s daughter and a CyberTip reporting child pornography uploaded to Instagram. Investigators were able to trace the account of the chat and the Instagram account back to Adams.

In an interview with investigators, Adams admitted to being the owner of the chat and Instagram account, as well as possessing and uploading child pornography.

Initially, Adams was charged with 10 counts of Sexual Exploitation of a Minor, however, six of those charges were dropped and the remaining four counts were reduced to third-degree felony charges of Attempted Sexual Exploitation of a Minor as part of a plea agreement.

In an interview with Cedar City News, Assistant Attorney General Ryan Holtan explained the reasoning behind the plea agreement.

“The tricky thing with child pornography is, there’s sometimes thousands and thousands of counts,” Holtan said. “Regardless of how many counts of child pornography you charge somebody with, if they’re convicted of two, five, 10 or 20, the courts actually don’t treat those much differently.”

According to Holtan, the current plea dead carries a greater sentence than if he had been convicted of all counts he was originally charged.

“What we did is, when we pled him to the four charges, we ran those consecutive,” he said. “If he screws up, he’ll go to prison for up to 20 years. Whereas, an initial charge of child pornography only carries the potential of up to 15 (years).”

The Utah Attorney General’s Office wishes to thank the Beaver County law enforcement officers who assisted with this case.

Utah Man Charged For Possessing Child Pornography, Grooming 6-Year-Old Girl For Over a Year

May 28, 2020

Last week, the Utah Attorney General’s Office Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force charged a Utah man after he allegedly groomed a 6-year-old girl by chatting through video and text for over a year and received sexually explicit images of her and her 6-year-old cousin.

Danny Steven Hardman, 43, was charged in the 3rd District Court with four counts of Sexual Exploitation of a Minor, a second-degree felony.

On April 13, 2020, Facebook reported that four images of child pornography had been sent to Hardman through Facebook Messenger. The Facebook account that sent the images belonged to a 6-year-old girl in Indiana. The account was setup “as a permitted child account associated with a parent Facebook account”. In an interview with Indiana law enforcement, the mother of the victim admitted to approving the Facebook contact with Hardman and that they had met Hardman through a mutual friend and played online video games together. She denied knowledge that Hardman had been chatting with her daughter. She was able to identify the other 6-year-old girl in the photos as a cousin who often visited their home.

On May 21, 2020, agents served a search warrant on Hardman’s home. During an interview, Hardman admitted to chatting with the victim for over a year, almost every day through both video chat and Facebook Messenger. He stated that these chats would often last for over an hour but were never sexual.

The charges state that Hardman had “built a close personal relationship with the victims in this case through more than a year-long pattern of grooming behavior”.

The Court ordered bail be set at $500,000.

Former SLC Airport Director Arrested for Possessing Over 50,000 Files of Child Pornography

May 21, 2020

Last week, the Utah Attorney General’s Office Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force arrested and charged the former director of operations for the Salt Lake City International Airport for possessing over 50,000 images of child pornography.

Randall Darwood Berg, 69, was charged in the 3rd District Court with 25 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, all second-degree felonies.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received eight separate Cybertip reports from Google of a user uploading and storing suspected files of child pornography to their account. An agent with the ICAC Task Force inspected the reported files and confirmed they contained child pornography. The ICAC Task Force was able to trace the files back to Berg who lived in Draper, Utah. A search warrant revealed approximately 30,000 images of child pornography.

After executing a residential search warrant, ICAC agents discovered an additional 20,000 files of child pornography on his computer.

In an interview with ICAC agents, Berg admitted to intentionally searching for child pornography since 2001 or 2002.

The Court has ordered that bail be set at $500,000.

Two Separate Men Arrested in Child Pornography Investigations

March 7, 2020

Two separate men were arrested this week and charged with multiple counts of child exploitation of a minor after being found in possession of child pornography by the Utah Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.

45-year-old Antony Martin Holtry of Salt Lake City was arrested after search warrants in January and February by ICAC agents revealed evidence of child pornography. According to law enforcement, Holtry uploaded child pornography to his Facebook and Gmail accounts in November.

Additionally, Holtry has an extensive criminal history including threats of violence made to law enforcement. Along with the child pornography, a stolen driver’s license and firearms were found in his house.

Holtry was charged with 10 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor and is being held on $250,000 bail.

35-year-old Jason McKay Beckstead of Orem was arrested after he allegedly uploaded child pornography on Instagram and Tumblr. The Orem Police Department arrested Beckstead after receiving a cyber-tip from the Utah Attorney General’s Office on a suspect allegedly possessing and distributing child pornography.

On December 4, 2019, Instagram filed a cyber-tip report with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children after an image was uploaded to the social media platform that contained child pornogrpahy. On December 26, 2019, Tumblr filed a cyber-tip on reported images that contained child pornography. The email associated with both social media accounts were consistent, but the owner was unable to be identified by Attorney General’s Office agents until a judicial order was served to CenturyLink who reported the owner to be Beckstead.

Beckstead was arrested and charged with 20 second-degree felony counts of sexual exploitation of a minor by the Orem Police Department. He is currently being held on $200,000 bail.

Report tips to the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force at 801-281-1211 or at utahicac@agutah.gov.

ICAC Task Force Combats Proliferation of Child Sex Abuse Images

October 1, 2019

The proliferation of images and videos featuring the sexual abuse and torture of children, often referred to as child pornography, has increased exponentially over the years. Last year, tech companies reported an astounding 45 million online photos and videos of children being sexually abused.

By Rich Harris | New York Times | Source: The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

Utah is not immune to the rapid expansion of this epidemic. The Utah Attorney General’s Office Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force in inundated with combatting child sexual abuse in the State of Utah. Recently, the New York Times featured the ICAC Task Force in an article reporting on the increasing amount of reported child sexual abuse imagery in an increasingly virtual age.  

It was a sunny afternoon in July, and an unmarked police van in Salt Lake City was parked outside a pink stucco house. Garden gnomes and a heart-shaped “Welcome Friends” sign decorated the front yard.

At the back of the van, a man who lived in the house was seated in a cramped interrogation area, while officers cataloged hard drives and sifted through web histories from his computers.

The man had shared sexually explicit videos online, the police said, including one of a 10-year-old boy being “orally sodomized” by a man, and another of a man forcing two young boys to engage in anal intercourse.

“The sad thing is that’s pretty tame compared to what we’ve seen,” said Chief Jessica Farnsworth, an official with the Utah Attorney General’s Office who led a raid of the house. The victims have not been identified or rescued.

The year was barely half over, and Chief Farnsworth’s team had already conducted about 150 such raids across Utah. The specially trained group, one of 61 nationwide, coordinates state and regional responses to internet crimes against children.

The Utah group expects to arrest nearly twice as many people this year as last year for crimes related to child sexual abuse material, but federal funding has not kept pace with the surge. Funding for the 61 task forces from 2010 to 2018 remained relatively flat, federal data shows, while the number of leads referred to them increased by more than 400 percent.

Much of the federal money goes toward training new staff members because the cases take a heavy emotional and psychological toll on investigators, resulting in constant turnover.

The Internet is Overrun with Images of Child Sexual Abuse. What Went Wrong?

By Michael H. Keller and Gabriel J.X. Dance

To read the rest of the article go here.  

Investigators in Salt Lake City searching a home for abuse content. Confiscated electronic material in a mobile forensics lab. Jessica Farnsworth, an official with the Utah attorney general’s office who oversaw the operation. | Kholood Eid for The New York Times


The Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force (ICAC) is a multi-jurisdictional task force that investigates and prosecutes individuals who use the Internet to exploit children. The Utah Attorney General (UAG) ICAC Task Force was created in 2000 and is now one of 61 ICAC task forces in the country. They focus on crimes related to sexual exploitation of a minor – whether possessing, distributing, or manufacturing child pornography, enticing minors over the internet, or exchanging material deemed harmful to minors. The UAG ICAC Task Force has 32 local, state, and federal police agencies involved in the task force.

You can learn more about ICAC and how to keep your family safe, check out the ICAC Task Force here: https://attorneygeneral.utah.gov/justice/internet-crimes-against-children-icac-task-force.

Behind the Badge: How Officers Process the Horrors of Child Exploitation Cases

June 5, 2019

Don Hudson with ABC4 News met with ICAC Commander Jessica Farnsworth to discuss the mental toll it takes to be an officer of the ICAC Task Force. In order for ICAC officers to find and arrest child predators, they have to view the evidence, which contains horrific footage of children being sexually abused and tortured.

Watching the footage of crimes that they can’t stop, officers go through feelings of helplessness and horror, which can start taking a toll on their health. That is why ICAC has a wellness program and mandatory sessions with a clinical therapist.

In the first three months of 2019, ICAC made 104 arrests. Last month, they announced the arrest of 13 child predators in Utah County. While the investigations can be frustrating and painful, ICAC is ready to take down anyone who hurts children.

Read the rest of Hudson’s interview here.


The Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force (ICAC) is a multi-jurisdictional task force that investigates and prosecutes individuals who use the Internet to exploit children. The Utah Attorney General (UAG) ICAC Task Force was created in 2000 and is now one of 61 ICAC task forces in the country. They focus on crimes related to sexual exploitation of a minor – whether possessing, distributing, or manufacturing child pornography, enticing minors over the internet, or exchanging material deemed harmful to minors. The UAG ICAC Task Force has 32 local, state, and federal police agencies involved in the task force.

You can learn more about ICAC and how to keep your family safe, check out the ICAC Task Force here: https://attorneygeneral.utah.gov/justice/internet-crimes-against-children-icac-task-force.

Fighting Child Pornography: Answering Your Questions

May 2, 2019

Child pornography is a serious and growing problem in our state, and the Utah Attorney General’s Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force is fighting it every day. ABC4 reporter Brittany Johnson got a first-hand look at this problem recently, by riding along with the ICAC Task Force. She went with our officers to the frontline of this battle to capture and share the tragic reality of child pornography – and how ICAC fights against it – on ABC4’s 10 PM newscasts, April 25 and 26, 2019.

Based on the considerable feedback, the Utah Attorney General’s office is posting answers to the most frequently asked questions about the child pornography problem in our state. These questions are pouring into both the AG’s office and to ABC4 via email, social media, and telephone this week. There are thousands of concerned parents and Utah citizens who are troubled by child pornography and who want to protect their children and help fight against the problem. ICAC Commander Jessica Farnsworth answers the questions below.

Are there warning signs?  How can we can recognize those who view and/or trade, sell and share child pornography?

What are the various behaviors that act as ‘gateways’, which could lead a person to child pornography?

Are there any signals or warning signs that indicate a child is being sexually abused?

What can we do to protect our kids?

What do parents need to know about posting photos of their children on social media?

What does the average citizen need to know about child pornography?

What is the best way to get involved in stopping child pornography?

How do we stop the demand for child pornography?

ICYMI: Combating Child Pornography in Utah

April 29, 2019

Last Thursday and Friday, April 25-26, ABC4‘s Brittany Johnson highlighted the reality of the growing child pornography problem in Utah in a two-part special segment. Thursday, ABC4 rode along with Utah Attorney General’s Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) special agents to see the frontline action and experience the battle first hand. Friday, ABC4 spoke with Special Agent Sete Aulai and revealed who these perpetrators are and what you can do to help fight this epidemic.

TRIGGER WARNING: The following videos contain graphic and disturbing details regarding the sexual assault of children.

Utah’s Child Pornography Problem: Part 1 (Courtesy of ABC4 Utah)


Utah’s Child Pornography Problem: Part 2 (Courtesy of ABC4 Utah)

ABC4 Article: Utah’s Child Pornography Problem

Watch on ABC4: Utah’s Child Pornography Problem

April 25, 2019

Utah has one of the highest child pornography rates in the nation. Child pornography represents one of the cruelest and most horrific forms of sexual abuse against children. It preserves the very worst moments of a child’s life for the gratification of their abusers. The videos and images of child sexual abuse are traded, shared, and viewed as both currency and commodity. Some perpetrators use it as a tool to normalize their behavior and groom their victims. 

It is important to educate the public on what child pornography is, the way it is disseminated and traded, and how to protect your children from becoming victims of this kind of sexual exploitation.  

Taken from Child Pornography; The Harsh Reality & Legal Definition
presented & written by the ICAC Task Force earlier this year

Tune into ABC4 Thursday, April 25th and Friday, April 26th at 10 p.m. to learn more about this tragic epidemic and how you can protect your children.

Child Pornography: The Harsh Reality & Legal Definition

This is the first in a series of articles written by the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force to bring awareness to the reality of crimes that the ICAC Task Force combats daily in order to protect children and to ultimately bring about an end to these atrocities.

WARNING TO READERS:  THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE CONTAINS GRAPHIC WRITTEN DESCRIPTIONS OF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE. IT WILL BE DISTURBING TO SOME READERS.

Child pornography represents one of the cruelest and most horrific forms of sexual abuse against children. It preserves the very worst moments of a child’s life for the gratification and sexual pleasure of their abusers. The videos and images of child sexual abuse are traded, shared, and viewed as both currency and commodity. Some perpetrators use it as a tool to normalize their behavior and groom their victims. 

It is important to educate the public on what child pornography is, the way it is disseminated and traded, and how to protect your children from becoming victims of this kind of sexual exploitation.  

Legal Definition

Child pornography is, by definition, a depiction of a minor engaged or involved in sexually explicit conduct. The statutory definition for “Sexually Explicit Conduct” is found in Utah law under Utah Code Annotated 76-5b-103 with its own very specific definition:

“Sexually explicit conduct” means actual or simulated:

  • (a)        sexual intercourse, including genital-genital, oral-genital, anal-genital, or oral-anal, whether between persons of the same or opposite sex;
  • (b)        masturbation;
  • (c)        bestiality;
  • (d)       sadistic or masochistic activities;
  • (e)        lascivious exhibition of the genitals, pubic region, buttocks, or female breast of any person;
  • (f)        the visual depiction of nudity or partial nudity for the purpose of causing sexual arousal of any person;
  • (g)        the fondling or touching of the genitals, pubic region, buttocks, or female breast; or
  • (h)        the explicit representation of the defecation or urination functions.             

It is important to address the actual legal definition of child pornography because there is a common misconception that any depiction of nudity involving a minor could potentially qualify as child pornography. There is a misplaced fear that a parent’s picture of their child in a bathtub could be criminal, or that a picture of a young child nude at a beach could be illegal. This could not be further from the truth. Not only would these types of images not qualify legally as child pornography, they are so far below the true depictions of child pornography that they do not warrant the attention of prosecutors and investigators.

True child pornography, in stark contrast to family photos of bath time and beach vacations, is now more than ever, immeasurably darker and more disturbing than is widely understood. The FBI reports there are now more investigations of child exploitation with a connection to the Internet than ever before. The surge in child pornography on the Internet has led to increased victimization and trafficking to meet the demand for new pictures and live video of sexual violence against increasingly younger children. The highest “value” images traded on-line are those which depict the youngest victims and the most bizarre sex acts. It is common in the prosecution of child pornography cases to see pre-pubescent children as young as infants and toddlers being raped, subjected to violent sexual torture and abuse, and forced to engage in acts of bestiality. Digital images of each child victim are trafficked worldwide, and there may be thousands of defendants found to possess each victim’s images. Cases routinely involve terabytes of child pornography videos and images, and ever more sophisticated technology and tactics designed to conceal these heinous acts.

As this series continues we will discuss the damage child pornography and continued distribution of images of the sexual abuse inflicts on its victims. How the harm to victims is compounded by the knowledge that offenders are viewing, trading and using the pornographic images of the child victim for sexual gratification, often years later. Finally, it will review tools and information for parents to help them prevent their children from becoming victims or exposure to this type of material. 

Report child pornography to law enforcement by contacting the ICAC Tip Line at 801.281.1211 or your local law enforcement agency.