CEDAR CITY – A Cedar City man arrested Tuesday on a plethora of charges alleging child molestation is being held in the Iron County Correctional Facility in lieu of $200,000 bail.
Scott David Sullivan, 34, was originally charged with 21 charges involving various allegations of child sex abuse.
County Attorney Scott Garrett dropped a third of those however, after reviewing the case.
In an interview with Cedar City News, Garrett said he indicted Sullivan on the charges he believed he could convict on and shelved the ones he didn’t have enough evidence to take forward to a jury.
Garrett formally indicted Sullivan Friday on 14 separate charges. He now faces two counts of rape of a child and two counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child – all first-degree felonies.
He is also charged with 10 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, a second-degree felony.
If convicted, Sullivan could spend at least 25 years to life for each first-degree felony. Imprisonment is mandatory under Utah Code 76-3-406.
According to charging documents filed with the court regarding the details of this case, a woman went into the Cedar City Police Department Monday alleging she had found naked images of children on a laptop computer Sullivan had used.
She told authorities she discovered a web page the suspect had left open where the images were allegedly stored. The web page appeared to be a trash bin for an email account.
The court documents stated there were 11 photos on the computer that showed an adult male engaging in different sexual acts with at least one underage victim.
In addition, Sullivan had allegedly taken several naked photos of himself and almost that many of a young girl who was also depicted naked in the images, according to the court record.
There were no faces visible in any of the photos depicting criminal acts. Police stated however, after looking through all of the images it appeared Sullivan was the male subject in each of them.
Authorities said they were also able to identify the young victim the suspect was allegedly with in the photos.
The woman and another individual she brought with her to the police department when filing her report were both able to confirm where the photos were taken, documents stated.
Public Information Officer for Cedar City Police, Jimmy Roden, said authorities decline to comment on the case out of respect for the victims. The investigation involving this case is ongoing, he added.
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @tracie_sullivan
Ed. Note: Cedar City News | CedarCityUtah.com is a counterpart to St. George News | StGeorgeNews.com.
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these women r as heroic as a hero can get. i hope they know how beautiful and precious they are to so many, i am praying God blesses them ten fold for standing up for that child and protecting so many more at any cost! they r so special.
Scum bag! And debbie is right, the people reporting this criminal are heroes.
There is a special place in hell for scum such as this. He will be properly “prison blessed” once he makes his appearance in the general population.
May God have mercy on his soul….because the inmates won’t.