Bill Gates never saw this coming as he was developing his version of the best delivery system for anti-social behavior in the history of man-kind. His goal was to put a computer in everyone’s home making the knowledge of the world available in a quicker than a blink of an eye. Don’t blame Bill. Henry Ford who wanted to give everyone a car and he never saw a downside like 40,000 Americans dying a year in his invention. He never envisioned seat belts, traffic lights, airbags or D.U.I’s. They both never saw this coming. Yet this is where we find us now and it’s not that new.
Back in 1999 in a huge public relations blow to the Disney/Go network, an Infoseek executive in charge of combining Disney’s numerous internet holdings into the Go network was arrested on charges of allegedly soliciting sex online from what he thought was a 13-year-old girl. It turned out that the girl was actually an FBI agent sweeping the internet for sex offenders. The executive, Patrick Naughton, 34, of Seattle was arrested on the Santa Monica Pier, an entertainment area near Los Angeles, after he met a female officer who had arranged to meet him there. He was charged with interstate travel with the intention of having sex with a minor. Unfortunately today’s fool never heard of Mr. Naughton.
Austin Jefferson Jones (born December 12, 1992) is an American former YouTuber and musician from Bloomingdale, Illinois, who was active from the years 2007 to 2017, prior to his arrest for various sexual offenses, including production of child pornography.
After accumulating around 540,000 subscribers and over 20 million video views, Jones became more widely known due to his arrest related to sexual misconduct involving minors and his possession and production of child pornography. On February 8, 2019, his YouTube channel was terminated.
Jones began releasing music in 2007. In 2014, he released an EP titled We’ll Fall Together, which ended up at number 12 on the iTunes pop chart. In 2016, Jones released a full-length album titled Pitch Imperfect. Jones was also known for his a-cappella videos of song covers.
On May 10, 2015, the music website PupFresh reported that Austin Jones had contacted multiple underage female fans online, each time persuading the girl to twerk on video for him, giving her directions how to perform the act while being recorded. A Change.org petition started by an anonymous 15-year-old girl to revoke his planned participation in the upcoming Warped Tour surfaced in light of these events did not accumulate enough signatures, but Jones eventually withdrew from the tour and addressed the allegations in a video he uploaded to his channel, “Setting the Record Straight”, where he admitted that the allegations were correct and apologized for his actions, while denying nudity being involved in any of the videos he recorded or any of the webcam conversations. What he didn’t know or own up to was he was an addict and could not stop left to his un-aided self-will. So even with the shot across the bow 2015 he wasn’t able to stop.
On June 12, 2017, Jones was arrested at Chicago O’Hare International Airport by agents of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) on two counts of producing child pornography (once in 2016 and once in 2017). In each case he persuaded an underage female fan to make sexually explicit videos of herself, according to his directions. At a June 15 court hearing, Jones was released from federal custody to home confinement in his mother’s custody after posting a $100,000 bond, but was ordered to abstain from using the Internet while he awaits trial. He pleaded guilty to a single count of “receipt of child pornography” on February 1, 2019, with sentencing scheduled for May 3, 2019 when he was sentenced to ten years in federal prison.
The youthful-looking Jones confessed to asking six underage girls to make pornographic videos of themselves and send them to him as a way to prove they were true fans, according to a plea agreement. The girls were as young as 14. He used Facebook about 30 times to get minors to send him videos. He lured them by telling them they were part of a modeling opportunity and that he could assist them in obtaining followers on Instagram. To mitigate his sentence, Jones claimed he himself was sexually abused as a child as do many men after they are caught, the same as R. Kelley did.
“Production and receipt of child pornography are extraordinarily serious offenses that threaten the safety of our children and communities,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Katherine Neff Welsh said in the government’s sentencing memorandum. “Jones’ actions took something from his victims and their families that they will never be able to get back.” This is anything but a victimless crime.
When our rock star gets out of prison he will be a 36 year old registered sex offender. So much for the bright lights and world tours. This entire story makes me at first angry but in the end I just feel sad. What I believe in my heart is that the day before he committed a felony he was a sex addict, a sex addict who didn’t get the help he needed. The 2015 event that had no nudity was a precursor of things to come, once again re-enforces the truth about the dis-ease of addiction that if left untreated it will get worse, and for Austin Jones it did.
If any of this resonates in you either for you or for a love one, the best thing to do is to try to get out in front of it, because once the handcuffs go on all bets are off.
And remember misery is optional.
Give me a call, you are not alone.
NO MORE SECRETS 