A 48-year-old Rexburg man will spend up to a year on a rider after pleading guilty to felony video voyeurism. The rider is an intense therapy program lasting up to a year. Should a prisoner do well, they will be placed on probation.
Arthur Paul Morales and his court appointed attorney, Joshua Garner, met before Seventh District Judge Steven Boyce on Monday where Morales pled guilty to the charge in exchange for the state not charging him for rape, a charge which he strongly denied.
Both the defense and the prosecution agreed on the victim and the defendant consenting to making the videos last December. Morales later admitted to posting the sexually suggestive videos online without his victim’s consent.
The victim gave an impact statement where she stated Morales had posted the videos in retaliation for her charging him with rape.
“Your Honor, this was not an isolated offense,” the victim told the court. “One week after the rape, the defendant launched a sustained escalated campaign of retaliation. He publicly targeted me every day for approximately three and a half weeks.”
The woman says she now lives in constant fear of being recognized, and that Morales had “weaponized technology” to terrorize her.
“I learned he deliberately used identifying information — my name, location and photographs — so complete strangers could identify me and find me. The exposure has permanently stripped me of safety and anonymity,” she said.
Madison County Deputy Prosecutor Mckinzie Cole pointed out Morales’ lengthy criminal history.
“The distributing of sexually intimate videos on the internet without the consent of the victim — Mr. Morales tags these videos meant to identify the victim, who she was, where she lives — with degrading tags and words,” she said. “It was retribution out of anger for a report she made to law enforcement. It’s not a coincidence these videos were posted a few days later.”
Once pornographic videos hit the web, they are there forever, Cole said.
“They’re never really gone,” she said. “After several weeks, law enforcement, due to their fine work and diligence, were able to get to this website to be removed. At first, they were removed, and then they were back and then removed.”
Cole called for the videos to be seized. She asked that Morales serve two years fixed and three years indeterminate and to be suspended in place of the rider followed by probation. She also called for Morales’ restricted internet access and substance abuse treatment.
“He needs a period of incarceration that allows him to get rehabilitation at the same time. It makes the victim feel she is protected,” she said.
Garner said he wished the person who gave Morales alcohol and drugs when he was just 14 years old to also be charged.
“Controlled substances affected his decisions and brought us here today,” he said.
Garner noted how Morales was nearly killed while working on U.S. Highway 20 and spent a significant time recovering from two broken legs. He also lost a daughter in a car crash on I-15 two years ago. He self-medicated to help him cope.
Morales has been imprisoned at the Madison County Jail since July of last year. During that time, he has not received any disciplinary action. Morales has a low risk of offending and has also accepted blame for posting the sexually explicit videos while firmly denying the rape allegation.
“Art says ‘No, I did not rape this person’,” Garner said. “He denies it. He stands firm in his position that he did not rape the victim.”
Garner asked for an underlying sentence of two years fixed and three years indeterminant to be suspended in favor of a rider.
Boyce then sentenced Morales.
“I can certainly appreciate and understand (the victim’s) concerns,” he said “Once information is out on the internet, it is just almost impossible to contain. It’s very unfortunate that not only those vides were distributed without consent but are out there in the somewhat public domain. There’s no going back.”
Boyce expressed concern that Morales committed the crime out of revenge.
“(It was done out of) retaliation ... through the access of internet,” he said.
Boyce also noted Morales had spent a significant amount of time in jail.
“The court’s been aware in other cases that the Department of Corrections is not sending people to treatment on a prison sentence,” he said. “(Prisoners) sit in local jails until they’re almost done with their term. Then years later they’re being transported (to prison). There’s an objective argument that people get sooner and better treatment on a rider than they do in prison. which is not the way it’s’ supposed to be. That’s the way things stand in Idaho’s prison.”
Boyce noted Morales has done well following jail rules and has a lot of community support as evidenced by the letters Boyce had received and the large group attending the hearing to support Morales.
Should Morales place any more videos of his victim online once he’s released from the rider, he could possibly face prison time, Boyce said.
“Mr. Morales, I do want to admonish you that, by the victim, you may still have access to videos,” he said. “The record is clear, there was no consent to distribute those. If you were to do that in the future, it would be a serious violation and would result in additional charges. Law enforcement will be monitoring it carefully to see if there is additional distribution.”