Habitual sex offender convicted in Festival of Trees incident faces new charges

SALT LAKE CITY — A Salt Lake City man sent to prison for inappropriately touching a girl at the Festival of Trees in 2012 — who was supposed to have his parole terminated earlier this year — is facing new allegations of exploiting children.

Christopher Joseph Rebstock, 51, was charged Wednesday in 3rd District Court with ten counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, a second-degree felony. Each charge also comes with a habitual sex offender penalty sentencing enhancement if convicted.

In March, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received a cyber tip "that a user had uploaded several dozen files containing depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct to his or her account," according to charging documents.

The tip was passed on to Utah's Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, which identified the user as Rebstock, the charges state.

Prosecutors note in their charges that Rebstock was still on parole at the time for his 2013 conviction of attempted aggravated sexual abuse of a child, a first-degree felony. He was sentenced to a minimum of three years and up to life in the Utah State Prison.

In that case, Rebstock was at the Festival of Trees in Sandy, 9575 S. State, when he inappropriately touched an 11-year-old girl who had just walked off the stage after performing with her dance troupe. Other festival patrons told police they witnessed Rebstock grabbing the little girl's butt and chased him down and held him until officers arrived.

Rebstock was already a registered sex offender at the time of that arrest because in 2001, he pleaded guilty to an amended charge of attempted aggravated sex abuse of a child, a first-degree felony, in exchange for a charge of sodomy of a child being dropped, according to Utah state court records. He was released from prison in that case in 2009.

In addition, Rebstock served over a decade in prison for manslaughter for killing a 12-year-old neighbor girl in New Orleans in 1982. He was 16 at the time of Lara Deutsch's death. He was released early, however, when the Louisiana State Supreme Court ruled that Rebstock's confession was not obtained legally.

He was granted parole for his 2013 conviction in 2021, and, according to records from the Board of Pardons and Parole, was scheduled to be terminated from parole in May of this year until the new investigation was launched.

Instead, after the Internet Crimes Against Children team members started their case, they had Rebstock's parole officer seize his phone.

"Pursuant to a warrant, (agents) extracted the contents of the cellular phone and located 2,400 files of child sexual abuse material among (Rebstock's) personal files," the charges state.

In addition to his new charges, a parole violation hearing is now scheduled for Rebstock in November.

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