Hurricane man charged with sexually exploiting Las Vegas teen

A southern Utah man is facing charges accusing him of possessing child sex abuse material. He is also being investigated for suspicion of engaging in sexual activity with a teen boy in Las Vegas.

A southern Utah man is facing charges accusing him of possessing child sex abuse material. He is also being investigated for suspicion of engaging in sexual activity with a teen boy in Las Vegas. (Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News)


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HURRICANE — A Hurricane man is facing numerous charges after police say he traveled to Las Vegas to engage in sexual activity with a teenage boy.

Austin Riley Jensen, 33, was charged Thursday in 5th District Court with 15 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, a second-degree felony.

"This investigation was in conjunction with the FBI from both St. George and Las Vegas and is still ongoing," according to a police booking affidavit.

On Wednesday, investigators served a search warrant at Jensen's residence for all of his electronic devices, including computers, tablets and phones.

"A search of the devices was done on scene and a total of 15 separate images were observed" of child sex abuse material, the affidavit states. "The images were found on Austin's primary phone and a tablet and consisted of both still images and videos."

When questioned by investigators, Jensen admitted that the images were that of a then 15-year-old boy from Las Vegas and admitted to traveling to Vegas two years ago to engage in illegal sexual activity with him, the affidavit alleges.

"The investigation is still ongoing on the devices that were seized by the FBI (which) will be digitally downloaded and other child sex abuse material images are expected to be found," police said.

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Pat Reavy interned with KSL NewsRadio in 1989 and has been a full-time journalist for either KSL NewsRadio, Deseret News or KSL.com since 1991. For the past 25 years, he has worked primarily the cops and courts beat.

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