Layton mom who had sex with teen tells parole board she’s in better mind frame now

Layton mom who had sex with teen tells parole board she’s in better mind frame now

(Davis County Jail)


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UTAH STATE PRISON — A Layton mother sent to prison two years ago after police found her passed out in a gutter and later learned she had engaged in sex with a 15-year-old boy, says she is mentally in a much better place today.

“I’m definitely on a totally different mind frame now than I was then,” Amber Renee Bradley said in a recording of her most recent hearing before the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole.

In June 2016, Bradley was found intoxicated and passed out in a gutter while teenagers partied in her house with alcohol that she provided. When officers went to check out her residence, they found teens, ages 14 to 16, “unconscious lying next to beer, marijuana, drug paraphernalia and Xanax,” according to charging documents.

Days later, as detectives dove deeper into the case, Bradley was arrested in a second case for having a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old boy that she instigated by telling the boy she would buy him a dirt bike if he engaged in sex with her.

Bradley was convicted in one case of four counts of attempted child endangerment, a class A misdemeanor; and unlawful sexual activity with a minor and dealing in materials harmful to a minor, both third-degree felonies, in the other. If she serves her entire sentence, she will be released from the Utah State Prison in December of 2021.

On Oct. 1, Bradley, now 32, went before a member of the parole board for the second time. In contrast to the “extremely slurred” speech and disoriented state she was in when police found her, Bradley was well-spoken and alert during her hearing.

She talked to board member Denise Porter about how she had completed the prison’s sex offender treatment program.

“It’s actually been a really rewarding experience. It’s helped me identify a lot of things and behaviors that I definitely needed to correct that I was blinded to,” she said. “I had a lot of distorted thinking, I had a lot of thinking errors. I had a lot of risk factors that I wasn’t aware of why I was reacting the way that I was. And it’s just opened my eyes and made me a lot more mindful of my consequences and my actions and how it affected a lot of people and myself,” she said.

Bradley said she first started using cocaine when she was 12. Then she went through a period of sobriety when she became pregnant with her daughter.

“I found it more rewarding to take care of myself by myself,” she said of her sober living.

But after her daughter was born, Bradley said a series of tragic events in her life, including several deaths in the family and having to place her daughter for adoption, led her back into drug usage.

“It just put me in a bad place, and my mind, I just didn’t care anymore,” she said.

Now, Bradley said when she is released, she has new tools to take with her that she learned from substance abuse treatment while incarcerated, so she won’t go into “self-sabotaging” mode again.

Bradley said when she is released, she plans to live with her aunt who has provided a lot of support the past few years.

“But she did tell me she won’t tolerate my nonsense. So she’ll be the first person to tell my (parole officer),” Bradley said.

She said she also has a job already lined up and waiting for her, and she hopes to go back to school.

Bradley said when she is released, she would agree to conditions such as random drug testing, and having no contact with anyone involved in her prior cases. She also plans to continue drug treatment.

“I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure I don’t fall back into what I was doing before,” she said.

The full five-member board will now vote on whether to grant parole.

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Pat Reavy is a longtime police and courts reporter. He joined the KSL.com team in 2021, after many years of reporting at the Deseret News and KSL NewsRadio before that.

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