- Alison Lynn Murphy was sentenced to 25 years to life for child sexual abuse.
- Murphy pleaded guilty to sodomy on a child and said in a letter to the judge that her boyfriend at the time manipulated her.
- Charges against her former boyfriend, Nathan Jimenez, are pending; he allegedly received child abuse images from Murphy.
PROVO — A Pleasant Grove woman was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison on Monday after admitting to sexually abusing a minor.
Alison Lynn Murphy, 37, pleaded guilty to sodomy on a child, a first-degree felony. In addition to the prison sentence, 4th District Judge Kraig Powell also ordered her to pay nearly $5,000 to the Utah Office for Victims of Crime to reimburse the costs incurred for the victim in the case.
In her plea statement, she said she discussed fantasies about sexually abusing the child with Nathan Jimenez, with whom she was in a sexual relationship at the time, and acted on the conversation.
In her sentencing on Monday, Powell gave her credit for the time she has served and for the sex offender treatment she has already completed. She was ordered to register on the sex offender registry. Murphy also agreed in her plea to relinquish any computer equipment with child sexual abuse material to law enforcement.
As part of a plea deal, two counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child as a person in a position of trust and three counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, all first-degree felonies, were dismissed.
In addition to dismissing these charges, prosecutors agreed not to refer the case for consideration of federal charges. The plea agreement said the parties agreed that the sentence of at least 25 years is just for Murphy's sexual abuse and her production and distribution of child sexual abuse material.
Related charges were also filed against Jimenez, 52, of American Fork, who said his wife found an envelope with eight pictures that were child pornography and turned it into the police. According to the documents, Jimenez told police Murphy gave him the images, and Murphy later admitted to producing them.
In a letter Murphy wrote to the judge ahead of her sentence, she said she felt trapped and desperate in her relationship with Jimenez. She said she does not think she deserves 25 years in prison because she wasn't in the right mental state that night, but pleaded guilty because she was scared of the risk of going to trial.
She said she "lost who I was at the time," was manipulated and never would have abused the girl on her own. She said she knew she had made a mistake and knew it was wrong from the beginning, but she "felt trapped" and threatened.
"I didn't know what I was doing sending those pictures to him. I tried to stop it, tell him to delete them off his phone. I deleted them," she said.
Jimenez is currently charged with eight counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, a second-degree felony. His next hearing is scheduled for Aug. 7.
