Online video game playing that eventually led to explicit sexting has resulted in child pornography and enticement charges against a 19-year-old Burlington man involving an Indiana girl, now 16.
Jakob Wilhite was charged July 15 with possession of child pornography and sexual exploitation of a child in Racine County Circuit Court.
According to the criminal complaint, Wilhite met the girl online in 2018, when she was 14 or 15 years old, while playing the video game Fortnite. The online relationship progressed to sexual-oriented messaging, including fully nude images of the girl, sometime in 2019, the complaint alleges.
Investigators recovered a video recording from Wilhite’s phone, dated December 13, 2019, which shows the girl unclothed and masturbating while Wilhite watches from an inset video displayed within the recording, according to the complaint. Wilhite allegedly admitted to recording the video of the incident, which occurred on Discord, a real-time messaging app that is often used by gamers to communicate. Wilhite also admitted to masturbating while he watched the girl, according to the complaint.
Burlington police began investigating Wilhite last December after a friend of the Indiana girl, who lives in the Madison area, contacted them to report that the girl told him Wilhite was threatening to send her nude images to her family members, according to the complaint.
The friend from Madison forwarded strings of text messages to police that allegedly show Wilhite calling the girl a “whore” and a “f——- slut” and threatening to send the images to her family and contending “she can’t stop him,” according to the complaint.
Police interviewed the Indiana girl by phone and she said she told Wilhite to leave her alone, but he threatened to post the photos on Facebook and tell her family, according to the complaint. The girl told investigators she was scared so “she just did what (Wilhite) asked her to do,” the complaint alleges.
The timeline of events provided in the complaint indicates that Wilhite made threats months before recording the video of the girl in December.
Wilhite made his initial appearance in court via video feed on Monday and remained in the Racine County Jail Tuesday pending payment of $16,000 cash bond.
A status conference is the case is scheduled for Aug. 13 in Racine County Circuit Court.
For more court news see the July 30 edition of the Burlington Standard Press.
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