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West Valley Man Charged For Sexual Exploitation And Enticing A Minor Using Textnow App

A man in West Valley City is facing charges after police say he posed as both a boy and a girl online in order to solicit a nude picture from a young boy in southern Utah, according to areport from KSL. Eric Taylor Pitts, 31, was charged Friday in 3rd District Court with two second-degree felonies — 10 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor and one count of enticing a minor. He was also charged two counts of dealing harmful materials to a minor, which is a third degree felony. 

 

According to the charging documents, Pitts posed as a 14-year old boy while using the Textnow app. Later, Pitts introduced the victim to his second persona, “Ashley.” Pitts used this girl character to convince the boy to send an explicit photo of himself. 

 

Investigators searched Pitts’ cellphone and found 550 images “depicting young children nude, in underwear, and in bathing suits,” according to the charges. 

Tyler Hewitt is the web/social media assistant at UPR. He writes stories every day, updates the website and manages the station's Twitter and Facebook pages. Tyler is a senior at Utah State University and is studying public relations, marketing, and psychology. He loves to write, listen to music, play video games, play tennis and hang out with his fiancé and cat, Juno. He is a great plant dad and recently started collecting vinyl records!