The Utah County district against therapists in the study of “ritualistic sexual abuse” sank again

American Fork – Criminal advertisements against a former therapist who was accused of “ritual sex abuse” in Utah County were fallen a second time due to evidence.

The fourth district judge Roger Griffin rejected the indictment last week, but said that he was still considering whether he dismissed the case against David Hamblin (70) with or without prejudice. Hamblin's lawyer asked that the charges were released with prejudices so that the case could not be submitted again.

According to a legal document, the prosecutors have not agreed in which General Prosecutor Nathan Evershed, the special lawyer, the Attorney General Nathan Evershed, argued that the dismissal of the case – would not be a mandatory decision.

Evershed said that the decision to reject the case was primarily based on concerns about the evidence, but also on the problems of discovery and referred to evidence and information between prosecutors and defenders.

The fees

Hamblin was charged in 2022 after the investigators said that the former therapist was a threat to children and the residents of Utah County.

A woman reported in April this year and informed the investigators that Hamblin sexually attacked her in the mid -1980s, when she was 6 or 7 years old, and lived her family in the same neighborhood of Provo as Hamblin.

She said she would go to his house where she and other children of him became babyos, and Hamblin would make her and other children carry out sex files, claims an affidavit from the police. The affidavit said the other two people had confirmed the story.

After earlier allegations, the therapeutic license of Hamblin was revoked that he had sexually abused clients, but the affidavit said that he continued to use “healing circles” to carry out therapy, and the investigators believed that the abuse carried out.

The dismissed charges against Hamblin include three cases of sodomy in a child and a rape of a child, both crimes of the first degree and two cases of sexual abuse of a child, a second degree.

The Sheriff's office in Utah County published an explanation a few months before submitting an indictment in which he was sought for victims of “sexual child abuse and sex trade for children”, but was not said at the time who was examined.

In 2023, Hamblin's ex-wife Roselle Anderson Stevenson, 72, was charged with sodomy in a child, a crime of the first degree. Its fall continues, but recently the public prosecutor's office in Utah has been removed from the case.

Manti case

The first time that Hamblin's Utah County case was rejected, the judge said in his 6th district court in Sanpete County that the dismissal had no influence on this case that was due to another investigation and the victim.

Hamblin was planned last week in the case of the 6th district court for a preliminary hearing, where he is charged with six cases of sexual abuse of a child, a second degree crime. On the day before the hearing, his lawyer Brian Frees asked to delay them, and claimed that the prosecutors had not sent the full documents to which he is entitled to a provisional hearing.

In the application, Frees said that Hamblin recently invented from the case of Utah County that lawyers with the counties Juab and Utah have had evidence since 2022 that should have been made available to him, but only in February. He asked the court to arrange the law firm of the district in Utah to provide all information after a thorough review of the agencies involved in the investigation.

In the Sanpete County case, Hamblin will have a hearing for planning on March 5.

Should the examination continue?

The examination of the “sexual abuse of ritualistic children”, in which Hamblin is involved, has not yet been completed, but two people who are involved in the investigation but not accused ask the general prosecutor's office in Utah to stop the investigation And to spend a letter in which the allegations are unfounded.

Joseph and Lee Udall Bennion lived near Hamblin and his wife in Spring City, Sanpete County. Her son -in -law and lawyer Caleb Proulx said that they were “wrongly of ritual satanic abuse” by Hamblin's daughters of over 140 people.

The investigations also include the former lawyer of Utah County, David Leavitt, who said at a press conference that the allegations against him are wrong.

ProLX said that the allegations examined include hundreds of criminal acts – including not only sexual abuse, but also murder and cannibalism – from a group of “satana prayer”. He said the allegations about the Satanian group were “categorically wrong” and “fantastic and incredible”, based on the number of people allegedly involved and the public situation of some of the alleged crimes.

In a letter to the Attorney General, he said that the original investigation, which began in 2012, ended with the office in which he issued a similar letter to the one he now asked – the office had determined the available evidence.

According to the letter, the records published from the initial examination have led to problems for the bennions, including harassment, stalking, public threats and vandalism of their ceramic business several times. You have taken legal action against two of the people involved and received a stalking incorporation.

Despite these contacts by members of the public, Proulx said that the Bennions had never been contacted for interviews by law enforcement agencies as part of the investigation. He also said that Hamblin's lawyers have announced that the law enforcement authorities recognize that there is no supporting evidence that there is a “Satanian group”.

“Despite these signs that there is no credible evidence of this satanic activity after years of investigation, public explanations of law enforcement suggests something else,” said Proulx.

During the examination of the Sheriff office of the district of Utah and the Sheriff, Mike Smith, he said comments during the investigation that said this month that his office would “no longer push forward” in the case.

Proulx said that despite the promises of more arrests and charges, there have been no more for two years. Instead, fees were dropped. He said there are many, like his customers who “wait for concern and uncertainty under a cloud while they are exposed to threats and harassment.

“It is time that the general prosecutor's office does the right and corrects the records by issuing a declination decision,” said Proulx in an explanation.