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SALT LAKE CITY -- A Riverton man remains in jail on suspicion of sexually assaulting a boy more than a decade ago. KSL has learned that in 1994, the same man pleaded guilty to attempted sex abuse on a child in 1994.
The 1994 charge 60-year-old Kenneth Burr pleaded guilty to was attempted sex abuse of a child. He was sentenced to got three years probation and 10 years on the sex offender registry.
"If a person's convicted of sexual abuse of a child, if it's a felony crime, that's a lifetime registration. But if it's a misdemeanor or an attempted crime, that's 10 years," said Angie Welling, spokeswoman for the Utah Department of Corrections.
Welling says the time a person gets on registry is very crime specific. It's not doled out on case-by-case basis.
"For three years while he was on probation, he was on the registry. And then once he went off probation he had 10 additional years after that time. So, he was listed on the state sex offender registry from 1994 to March 2007," Welling explained.
Over the years, Department of Corrections has added more crimes and offenses to the registry. The length of time on the registry for certain offenses has also increased somewhat.
Welling says there is no way for offenders to decrease the amount of time on the registry, but time can certainly be added for non-compliance or bad behavior.
According to these new allegations, Burns might have abused another child before he pleaded guilty to the first case.
Burr was arrested Tuesday on allegations of child sex abuse. He was booked into the Salt Lake County Jail Wednesday morning on seven counts of sodomy on a child. He's being held in the jail on $2.5 million bail.
In the probable cause statement, the victim says he was friends with Burr's stepson and spent a considerable amount of his childhood at Burr's South Jordan home.
The alleged victim, who's referred to as P.J., reports that it started in 1991. The documents says, "As P.J. was taking a shower, Kenneth Burr entered the bathroom."
The report goes on to say that during another encounter, "P.J. noticed a knife ... Kenneth Burr then told him, 'Shut up or I am going to hurt your family.'"
The alleged victim accuses Burr of assaulting him multiple times at Burr's house between 1991 and 1994.
South Jordan police, who arrested Burr, say there may be more victims that officers are working to contact.
The Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office says Burr will likely have an initial appearance at the beginning of next week.
Meanwhile, the Department of Corrections says the legislature has looked at increasing time on the registry for multiple past sex convictions.
E-mail: ngonzales@ksl.com
