ROSWELL, Ga. — The Department of Justice said a Roswell man has been sentenced to 17 years in prison after he held a 13-year-old girl in his apartment for three weeks and recorded his repeated sexual encounters with her.
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According to U.S. District Attorney Ryan Buchanan, Derrick Hunt. 39, saw a Facebook post from the young teen that said she wanted to run away from her family in 2012. Hunt knew the girl was 13 but agreed to pick her up.
Back at his apartment in Roswell, prosecutors said Hunt gave the teen alcohol, marijuana and opioids in order to sexually abuse her. Buchanan said that over the next three weeks, he engaged in numerous sex acts with the girl, many of them while she was impaired by alcohol or drugs. All of the sex acts occurred in Hunt’s living room, where he had placed a camera to record them.
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On July 7, he arranged for the girl’s father to pick her up at a restaurant. He was unaware that the girl’s father had arranged for the police to be present at the meeting location. Hunt was arrested when he dropped the victim off.
Hunt was later released on bond and fled the state. He was arrest in 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada, under an alias.
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Hunt was charged with child molestation and child pornography offenses. He was convicted on the charges on May 16, 2022 and sentence to 17 years and six months this week.
“Sexual predators use every opportunity, including leveraging social media platforms, to lure children into these kinds of exploitive situations,” Buchanan said. “The experience of this victim and her family is the kind of nightmare scenario for unsuspecting parents that we encourage citizens to try to avoid through vigilant monitoring of their children’s social media activities.”
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