Connecticut state police have arrested a man accused of having sex with 14-year-old girl.
State police said Julian Butler, 34, of Hartford, turned himself in Tuesday after learning of a warrant for his arrest. He faces charges of risk of injury to a child and second-degree sexual assault.
According to the arrest warrant application, Butler admitted to meeting the teen on the “Whisper” app in March.
The application states that the victim told police that on March 9, 2016 she skipped school and invited a man she knew by the screen name “Mr. Sweet” to her home in Stafford around noon. He reportedly told her that he was 17, then later said he was 23. The victim reported that they had unprotected vaginal intercourse.
The victim told a counselor at school that she thought she might be pregnant.
The victim and her father allowed police to search her cellphone. Police examined her conversations with Mr. Sweet on the Whisper App. According to the arrest warrant application, police found 142 pages of conversations, some of which included sexually explicit photos. The conversations also included photos of the suspect’s face.
The victim also provided a description of the suspect, including several of his tattoos, and said that he drove a gold-colored car.
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The arrest warrant applications states that using information from the cellphone and the security branch for Whisper, police tracked the suspect’s IP address to Mortson Street in Hartford. Police said they noticed a gold Nissan Maxima parked in a driveway at 10/12 Mortson Avenue.
Police ran registrations for several gold vehicles matching the victim’s description. One of them came back to Butler. Police discovered that Butler had a criminal history and through photos in the Department of Correction system determined that he had a tattoo that matched the victim’s description.
On May 31 detectives spoke with Butler at an apartment on Mortson Street. According to the arrest warrant application, Butler provided police a voluntary written statement at that time.
In the written statement, Butler admitted he went to Stafford in March to meet up with a girl he met on the Whisper app. He told police he brought marijuana and a condom to the meeting. He said she told him when he showed up at the home that she was 14.
In his statement Butler admitted to having oral sex with the victim but denied having vaginal intercourse. He said he left the home and continued to talk to her on Whisper for a few weeks, then “got bored” with the app and decided to delete it. He also told police in the statement that he deleted the app because of the girl’s age.
Based on the victim’s report, their investigation and Butler’s statement police applied for an arrest warrant.
Butler is being held on a $25,000 bond and scheduled a court date of August 30. He was also ordered to have no contact with the victim.
