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TAYLORSVILLE — A Taylorsville man was charged Thursday with sexually abusing young children and possessing hundreds of images of child pornography.
Derek Von Taylor, 29, is charged in 3rd District Court with three counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child and sexual exploitation of a minor, both first-degree felonies; 10 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, a second-degree felony; and lewdness involving a child, a class A misdemeanor.
Prosecutors have requested that Taylor be held in the Salt Lake County Jail without bail.
The investigation began in November when the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received a tip that someone had uploaded hundreds of files of child pornography to a Dropbox account.
The Internet Crimes Against Children task force served a search warrant on Taylor's home on Tuesday and found "significant amounts of child pornography" on his electronic devices, according to charging documents.
Some of the files contained videos of infants and children being sexually abused and in some cases tortured, accordant to a police affidavit.
"Taylor stated he was sexually attracted to children. During the execution of the search warrant, numerous files of child pornography similar to those described above were located on Taylor's cellphone and on a hard drive," the affidavit states.
During an interview with police, he also claimed he had sexually abused two young children under the age of 10 on multiple occasions between 2017 and 2019, according to charging documents.
