19-year-old arraigned for rape and child pornography charges - East Idaho News
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19-year-old arraigned for rape and child pornography charges

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IDAHO FALLS– An Ammon man has pleaded not guilty to charges of statutory rape and possessing child pornography.

Joseph Stanley Loertscher, 19, was arraigned in a Bonneville County court Tuesday.

Loertscher is facing one count of felony statutory rape of a victim under 16 and three felony charges of child sexual abuse by soliciting a minor under 16 to participate in a sexual act, willfully possessing child sexually exploitative material and causing a child to engage in or be used for explicit sexual conduct for the purposes of producing sexually exploitative material.

He is charged with crimes allegedly committed in April 2016 and July 2017.

Loertscher is accused of raping a 15-year-old girl in the Hillview Elementary School parking lot in April 2016. Both Loertsher and the victim were in high school at the time. Initially, no charged were filed against Loertscher for this incident. The statutory rape charge was filed months later after law enforcement was notified in June about Loertscher communicating and exchanging illegal sexually explicit images with teenage girls on the internet. One of the teens was the girl he had had sex with.

Court documents show Loertscher had more than 200 photos and videos of teenage girls, which contained sexually exploitative material. The victims were between the ages of 15 and 16.

Documents state he was “asking them to send him naked photos of themselves, to sext him, role play and to have sex with him, knowing they are minors under the age of 18.”

Loertscher admitted to sending nude photos of himself to the victims and to receiving sexually explicit images from them in return, according to court records.

Loertscher will appear in court next Nov. 13 for a pretrial conference. His jury trial is scheduled for Dec. 5.

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