A warning to parents: Utah mom describes how she believes her 12-year-old was groomed, raped

This file photo dated March 3, 2017, shows the Snapchat app on a mobile phone. | AP

‘He stole my baby’s innocence’

SALT LAKE CITY — She thought allowing her 12-year-old daughter to have Snapchat would be a way for her to communicate with family members.

“The whole intention behind using Snapchat was to use the filters. You know, to do the silly pictures and stuff. And the idea was that she would be able to do that with her nieces and her cousins,” the girl’s mother said.

Instead, what happened was a nightmare that the mother and her daughter are still trying to recover from.

“If I could take that day back that she wanted to put the butterflies on her face or whatever, our life would be in a different place now,” she said.

“He stole my baby’s innocence.”

On March 19, Arik James Jeppsen, 19, of Murray, was charged in Salt Lake City’s 3rd District Court with eight felonies: child kidnapping, rape of a child, sodomy on a child, sex abuse of a child, enticing a minor and other charges. He has yet to enter any plea.

Jeppsen is accused of meeting a 12-year-old girl on Snapchat, befriending her, and then one day picking her up and taking her to his house and raping her.

Salt Lake County Jail

Arik Jeppsen, 19, is accused of sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl he met on Snapchat.

Jeppsen’s attorney, Brian Morris, declined Friday to comment for this story.

The mother of the young girl said despite all of the talks and warnings she had given her daughter about strangers and frank discussions about sexual activity, she believes her daughter’s attacker patiently groomed her while lying about his age on social media.

The entire ordeal for the mother and her family has been “shocking,” she said. But now she wants others to know what happened in hopes of preventing something like this from happening to another child.

“I want healing and positivity to come from this,” said the mother, who asked not to be identified to protect her daughter’s identity.

She also hopes her daughter’s story will encourage other parents to become more familiar with social media apps used mainly by children and young adults, and the dangers associated with them.

“I was not thoroughly educated about the (Snapchat) app, and I thought it was just for the filters and stuff. I didn’t realize the intensity or the availability that it created for basically people to come into your house and destroy your life. That’s my ignorance. I blame myself for that every day.”

‘Psychological warfare’

The mother said she got her daughter a cellphone when she was about 9. She said she and her husband had been good about doing random “spot checks” on their daughter's phone to make sure she wasn’t engaging in activity she shouldn’t be.

And she said her daughter has always been honest with her.

“We had no reason at all to believe or suspect that anything unsafe was going on because we had never found anything prior to this incident,” the mother said.

When she agreed to allow her daughter to download the Snapchat app to her phone, it was so she could use the filters that are offered, such as putting dog ears on a photo or hearts or different hairstyles.

Then in January, the mother said her daughter received a “Quick Add” request and message on Snapchat. The person who wanted to talk to the girl presented himself as a 16-year-old boy in high school who liked music and animals — two areas the girl was also interested in, her mother said. She accepted the request from the stranger, but immediately informed him that she was only 12 years old, according to her mom and a police affidavit.

Conversations about music and animals turned into the online boy giving her compliments about her looks, “then graduating into more personal things” during which time he started to initiate power and control over the girl, according to her mother.

“There was a significant grooming process that took place,” she said.

Between Jan. 30 and Feb, 20, Jeppsen sent messages to the girl asking to meet her for sex and would send her pictures of his genitals, according to charging documents.

That all happened, according to the mother, after he had gained the girl's trust.

“This 19-year-old man approached a 12-year-old child and manipulated her. It was not an even playing field,” the mother said. “It’s psychological warfare, and these kids are not sufficiently armed or educated. Their brains are not fully formed.

“This is completely left field for us. This is a child that has been consistently open and honest and never given us a reason to believe that something could be going on like this,” the mother continued. “We had provided every educational opportunity to her and she didn’t take it.

“She made a choice to engage in some pretty risky behavior and she owns that. But she’s also 12 years old.”

Then, on Feb. 21, the daughter agreed to meet her new online friend. She told her mother she was going to a nearby park, but then left without saying goodbye. She was picked up by Jeppsen, who took her to his house and raped her, according to the charges.

A different person

When the mother realized her daughter hadn’t said goodbye, and that she hadn't seen her in 90 minutes, she said she called her on her cellphone to find out where she was. Her daughter gave the unusual reply that she was sorry and that she just needed to get out of the house for a few minutes for a breath of fresh air.

“What are you talking about?” her confused mother inquired.

The daughter told her she was at the park and would be home in 10 minutes.

“I knew at that time that there was absolutely something not right,” the mother recalled.

But after 15 minutes had passed, her mother called again to find out where she was. The daughter repeated that she was almost there.

“What are you doing? You need to tell me what’s going on?” her mother said.

By that point, the mother said she assumed a boy was involved. But she assumed that whoever that boy was, he was her daughter’s age.

When her daughter walked in the door, her mother immediately questioned her.

“Do you want to tell me what’s going on? Do you want to tell me the truth today?” she pressed.

“I just needed some air,” the girl replied.

“Well, you and I both know that’s not true, so hand over the phone.”

That’s when the mother discovered her daughter had deleted her apps, including Snapchat.

“You need to come clean and tell me what’s going on so I know you’re safe,” her mother said she told her.

She made her daughter reinstall her apps, and began reading some of the messages on her Snapchat account. That’s when her daughter asked for 10 minutes alone in her room. When she came out, she wore a hoodie “tied so tightly around her face you could only see her eyes and nose,” and with her head bowed down, said she had met a high school boy who picked her up.

When asked if anything had happened, the girl said the boy tried to kiss her but she wouldn't let him.

But the mother wasn’t convinced, and tried looking up the boy on social media and made calls to the school district to find out more information. That’s when she discovered that he had graduated from high school over a year ago. The mother called police and an officer interviewed the daughter. But she still claimed nothing really happened.

In the days and weeks that followed, the mother said her daughter was a different person.

“I noticed a huge change in her at that point, I mean just huge. She was a different kid from that point. And she just kept telling me how sorry she was that she disappointed me,” she said. “I told her, ‘There’s absolutely nothing you can do that will change my love for you. I just love you more, It will never be negative.’”

But the mother believes that when her daughter walked in on her crying, she was overcome with guilt.

The next weekend, the daughter went on a trip with some relatives that included children. But “she had no interest in watching the kids. She didn’t want to share the sofa beds with the kids at all. She was very distant, very disrespectful, almost oppositional ... which is completely out of character,” her mother said.

When it came to sleeping at night, the daughter was told she might have to share a sofa bed with some of those children, who told her they were excited and wanted to hug her. That’s when the daughter said, “I don’t want anyone touching me.”

“For her to say I don’t want anyone touching me was really a trigger for me. There’s something not right.”

The mother then checked with her daughter’s teachers to find out what her behavior had been like in school. They told her that her daughter had been acting “strange.”

“She’s been defiant, argumentative ... she’s not focused, she’s not doing what she’s supposed to be doing, she’s challenging everything. And again, that’s not my child. That’s not my kid,” the mother said.

As the mom continued to find out more about Jeppsen, she said she learned he was in college. That’s when on March 3, she again approached her daughter and told her that the person she was with had lied to her about his age and that she had a feeling more happened than she was telling her.

“She just looked at me and nodded her head and just started sobbing,” the mother said.

Police were called again.

“The victim’s mother called (a Unified police detective) sobbing and in shock. She informed (the detective) that her daughter had just disclosed to her she was raped the day she went to Arik’s house,” according to a search warrant affidavit.

She’s my hero

On March 12, Jeppsen was arrested. After he was formally charged, bail was set at a very high $750,000. He remained in the Salt Lake County Jail Saturday. His next court hearing is scheduled for April 21.

Since the arrest, the mother said she has been trying to educate herself about social media apps used mostly by teenagers and young adults. She has since learned about other apps with chat rooms that link strangers together that she calls “so incredibly dangerous.” And as for Snapchat, “Honestly, with Snapchat, just don’t do it. I don’t care about the filters, I couldn’t care less about any of it,” she said.

The young girl’s case isn't the only recent investigation by police in Utah involving Snapchat.

• Guillermo Fuentes, 31, of St. George, was charged March 17 with sexual exploitation of a minor, dealing in harmful materials to a minor and five counts of unlawful sexual activity with a minor after prosecutors say he engaged in sexual activity with a 14-year-old girl he met on Snapchat.
• In South Jordan, police are investigating a case in which an unknown male used Snapchat to offer a 13-year-old girl $500 to $1,000 to watch him perform a sex act, according to a search warrant affidavit filed March 2. That investigation was ongoing as of Friday.

The mother said her daughter has begun therapy, but remains a different person today.

“The light in many ways has dimmed. The joy, the exuberance for life, the energy, the high energy, the intenseness of her personality has been dulled. And her self-esteem, her ability to trust, I mean the level of shame that’s going on right now is off the chart. She had been living, essentially, a double life, where she had this person in her ear and in her business, and unfortunately, their hold on her was greater than my lectures and life lessons about being safe. And that says a lot about the effort these people go to in order to find victims.”

But her mother said she is also proud of her daughter for having the courage to step forward.

“She’s my hero. She’s so brave,” her mother said.

“In my opinion, she very possibly saved the next person” from being victimized. “I am so proud of her that she came forward because now, with her story in this case, we can get the word out to other families to learn. And especially learn from my errors about not being better educated about social media,” the mother said.

“Don’t make the mistake I made. In this situation, don’t assume good intentions. Do your research on all these apps and learn about all the other stuff going on behind the scenes.”

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