PROVO — A Kansas City man has been arrested in Utah County for allegedly soliciting child sex abuse material from girls online.
Jonathan Alexander Demeyer, 22, was booked into the Utah County Jail Wednesday for investigation of 10 counts of aggravated sexual exploitation of a minor and 10 counts of distributing harmful material to a minor.
"Jonathan is also a public safety risk. As of 24 hours ago, he was engaging in sexually charged conversations with underage children while pretending to be a 14-year-old boy," according to a police booking affidavit.
The investigation began Tuesday when Demeyer's former girlfriend was going through his phone and found "many videos which she described as young children doing sexual acts," the affidavit alleges.
After contacting police, the woman called Demeyer with an officer who recorded the call. Demeyer claimed he had child sex abuse material on his phone "to use for scamming pedophiles online," according to the affidavit.
But the woman also looked at Demeyer's social media account "and found history of Jonathan messaging very young teenage girls in sexually charged conversation," the arrest report says.
Detectives served a search warrant on Demeyer's phone and "observed a large number of obvious child sexual abuse material on his phone. … Jonathan told the girls he was chatting with that he was 14, while he is actually 22," police wrote.
When confronted with the evidence, Demeyer told detectives he had messed up and "he downloads and trades child sexual abuse material" and had been doing it for up to five years, the affidavit states.
