Popular YouTuber Austin Jones has pled guilty to charges of the possession of child pornography, and court documents have revealed that he sexually abused a number of underage girls between 2010-2017. Jones was well-known on social media for his a capella covers of various popular songs. He was detained by police travelling at the Chicago International Airport.
Upon his arrest, Jones was charged by police with having: "Knowingly employed, used, persuaded, induced, and enticed a minor, namely Victim A, to engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing a visual depiction of such conduct, which visual depiction defendant knew and had reason to know would be transported and transmitted using any means and facility of interstate and foreign commerce, and which visual depiction was transported and transmitted using any means and facility of interstate and foreign commerce."
The 26-year-old, who hails from Bloomingdale, Illinois, now faces between 15-30 years in prison, as a result of his admission that he demanded and coerced minor fans into showing their genitals to him and send him other sexually-explicit videos of themselves. Despite the prosecution team's demand that Jones be taken immediately into custody, Judge John Lee has allowed Jones to remain free on bail as he seeks psychiatric counselling. Jones’ attorney claims that his client has only recently begun to deal with traumatic events in his own life.
Court documents have been released showing some of the deeply inappropriate texts Jones sent to his vulnerable victims. During the conversation, Victim B stated that she was Jones’s biggest fan. Jones repeatedly told her that she was 'so lucky' to have his attention and that she needed to 'prove' that she was his biggest fan. JONES stated that he wanted to 'spank' Victim B, and told her to "[t]hink about how amazing that would be for you!! To have your favourite singer spanking your ass!" before making a reference to her performing oral sex upon him.
Victim B then told Jones she wanted to "make you happy an all but I don’t [want] either of us getting in trouble over it [sic]" to which Jones replied: "Of course you can keep making videos! You’re doing a great job! and nothing is going to happen." When the victim voiced further misgivings about performing sex acts, Jones responded: "I guess you really aren’t my biggest fan…..ok then," and threatened to leave the chat unless Victim B complied with his instructions.
Jones had previously been accused of paedophilic/ephebophilic tendencies back in 2015, after May 10th, 2015, the Tumblr blog PupFresh published a post entitled 'Austin Jones Asking Underage Girls to Twerk For Him.' The blog post then alleged Jones of sending requesting inappropriate sexual images from underage girls, and had asked underage fans to send him twerking videos. On June 29th, Jones posted a video entitled 'Setting The Record Straight,' in which he apologized for any inappropriate behaviour, but denied requesting nude images or sexually explicit footage.
