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SALT LAKE CITY — A Draper man pleaded guilty Thursday to federal charges alleging he coerced a girl in North Carolina to take explicit images of herself for him, and drove from Utah to Nebraska to have sex with another teenager.
Isaac Dylan Kemp, 45, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City to two counts of the six-count indictment against him.
In the first count, production of child pornography, Kemp admitted in plea documents Thursday to convincing a 12-year-old girl in North Carolina to send him sexually explicit photos and videos over four months last year.
In the second count, travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct, Kemp pleaded guilty to soliciting 252 photos and videos from a teenage girl in Nebraska over three years, starting when the girl was 13, according to court documents. For more than two years of that time, Kemp also admitting traveling back and forth to Nebraska to have sex with the teen.
At sentencing on April 30, Kemp faces a minimum mandatory sentence of 15 years in federal prison for the child pornography charge, which could extend to up to 30 years. According to the plea deal, prosecutors will ask that Kemp serve 15 years, court documents indicate. Prosecutors will also move to dismiss the remaining four counts against Kemp.
The second charge also carries a potential 30 years in prison. The two sentences could be ordered to run back-to-back.
Meanwhile, Kemp still faces 10 counts of sex assault of a child in the first degree in Nebraska, according to court personnel there. A hearing in that case is scheduled in Richardson County, Nebraska, on Jan. 30.
Kemp was originally charged with 98 different felonies alleging sexual crimes involving the two girls between two separate cases filed by the Utah Attorney General's Office in 3rd District Court earlier this year. Those cases were dismissed in September when the federal indictment was handed down.
Prosecutors in the two state cases said Kemp posed online as a teenage boy, exchanging hundreds of pornographic pictures and texts with the then 13-year-old Nebraska girl.
In 2014, Kemp allegedly told the girl that his "uncle" would be in her hometown and asked if the man coulddrop a gift off at her house, according to charges in the state cases. The "uncle" was actually Kemp, police said, and he went to the girl's house and gave her a quilt.
Two months later, Kemp — while still posing online as a 16-year-old — told the girl, now 14, that his uncle would be back in town and that she should have sex with him so she could get experience, the charges state. Kemp, posing as the uncle, took the girl to a hotel room in Nebraska two nights in a row, and he raped her on the second night, court documents state.
The sexual activity continued until February 2016, police said, and all the while the girl continued to send pictures and videos to Kemp.
State prosecutors also said Kemp used the Kik messenger app to pose as a teen boy from California and exchanged numerous sexually explicit messages and pictures with the North Carolina girl in 2016.
During a forensic examination of just two days' worth of messaging in April 2016, investigators found "hundreds" of sexually explicit messages, the state charges indicated.
State prosecutors emphasized "the emotional and psychological harm" the girl experienced, noting that after being told who Kemp really was, the girl told investigators she was in love with the teenage boy from California and even attempted to contact him again, the charges state.
