A Utah man admitted to possessing child pornography after being arrested last year in Idaho for working with a white nationalist group on the way to riot at a Pride festival.
Jared M. Boyce, 28, pleaded guilty in April to nine out of 22 charges of sexual exploitation of children and misdemeanor charges of dealing in harmful material to children. With prejudice, all other felony charges were dismissed, KSL-TV, the Salt Lake City NBC affiliate, reports.
Court documents state that on July 11, 2022, FBI agents seized Boyce’s phone and discovered 22 images of child pornography on it.
“The images involve children from toddlers to prepubescents performing sexual acts on adults or other children, as well as images of children exposing their genitals,” the court documents state, with descriptive notes accompanying some of the images.
Boyce admitted to having accessed and possessed the images during a police interview, according to the outlet.
Boyce also confessed to participating in “sexually themed conversations about children” online, sending sexually explicit images of children, and exchanging graphic pictures of himself with a 16-year-old girl.
In June 2022, Boyce was among 31 Patriot Front group members arrested for conspiracy to riot in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.
Last year, his mother, Karen Amsden, who believes her son was radicalized, reported that he had been kicked out of his home for rioting and that his attitude and persona had soured after his father came out as gay to the family several years ago.
Boyce, facing 30 years in prison for child pornography charges, will be sentenced on Tuesday. However, the Idaho charges against him continue to loom over him.
A tipster noticed a group of similarly dressed people piled into a U-Haul truck last year. The observer found their possession of shields to be problematic and alerted the police.
Officers pulled the truck over, and the right-wing extremist group members exited the vehicle before being arrested.