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NAPLES, Utah (AP) -- A pregnant teenager was beaten by a man -- at her request -- in an effort to induce a miscarriage, according to police.
The man, 21-year-old Arron N. Harrison, was jailed and is charged with attempted murder of an unborn child. The girl also is in custody.
"I haven't decided who's more at fault," Mark Watkins, police chief of Naples, 130 miles east of Salt Lake City, told The Associated Press on Friday.
"She was just as cold as the assailant -- we're not going to treat her as a victim. She's in juvenile detention," he said.
Deputy Uintah County attorney Mark Thomas filed the attempted homicide charge Friday afternoon against Harrison.
Prosecutors will take more time to weigh charges against the 17-year-old girl, he said. Authorities weren't releasing her name.
According to the police chief, Harrison pummeled the girl's abdomen in a botched effort to abort the pregnancy. The six-month-old fetus survived, but doctors won't know for certain what injuries it may have sustained until it is born, the chief said.
Watkins called it shocking, cold and ruthless. "Her intention was, in fact, to abort the child -- to terminate the pregnancy," he said.
Officials didn't know if Harrison or the girl had defense lawyers.
Harrison, who was jailed Thursday on $10,000 bail, was expected to appear Tuesday in 8th District Court. If convicted of the felony charge, he faces one to 15 years in prison, Thomas said.
The girl, her stomach bruised badly, spent a day in a hospital before her arrest and is being held at a juvenile detention center, the chief said.
Thomas said the beating took place late Tuesday, and that the girl initially told her family she had been mugged by an unknown assailant.
The family called police, who discounted that story and got the girl to speak truthfully about what happened, Watkins said.
Harrison was arrested at his home, where the assault took place, police said. He was an acquaintance of the girl. "He wasn't the father, which makes this all the more bizarre," Watkins said.
(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
