Roy Webb Hunt

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from the East Valley Tribune in 2004:

“Former Apache Junction employee Roy W. Hunt was arrested earlier this month on charges of sexually abusing a girl from the time she was age 4 to 14, according to court records.

Hunt, 45, was denied bail and is being held at Maricopa County’s Madison Street Jail in Phoenix on charges of sexual conduct with a minor, molestation and sexual abuse.

He was arrested Nov. 3 after a grand jury indictment Oct. 19 in Maricopa County Superior Court.

The girl, now 24, went to Chandler police in July after she heard that Hunt was about to receive a leadership counselor role in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that would put him in contact with children, the police report stated.

Hunt resigned as business advocate with Apache Junction Nov. 8, city officials said.

“It was a complete shock to everybody,” said Apache Junction City Attorney Joel Stern.

Hunt, a close friend of the girl’s father, admitted in police interviews to fondling and kissing the girl over the course of several years, the report stated.

She told police that at one point, he said, “You can just consider us kissing cousins.”

Hunt said the girl was his only victim.

He lived with her family on and off for 10 years.

“That was a sick time,” he said during a taped telephone conversation with the victim earlier this year.

Hunt said he was excommunicated from the Mormon Church when he told his wife and bishop, and he spent two years in counseling and repentance to get back in good standing with the church.

Church officials could not be reached for comment.

When the girl turned 14, she confided in her aunt and a woman she babysat for, who both told the girl’s mother.

Her parents took her to their bishop, who urged them to call police but said there was little else he or the church could do, the report stated.

But the girl said she did not want police involved, and none of the adults who knew reported it.

“In hindsight, the child is the child and the adult needs to act on it, but at that point my husband had compassion for his daughter and did not want to put her through that,” her mother told police.

Hunt was city manager in Snowflake and Holbrook and a public finance banker at the National Bank of Arizona before being hired by Apache Junction in March.”

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from the White Mountain Independent in 2005:

“MARICOPA COUNTY – Former Snowflake Town Manager Roy Webb Hunt was sentenced on Aug. 26 after accepting a plea deal in a child sex abuse case with allegations that stretch back to the early 1980s.

Hunt pled guilty to one charge of attempted molestation of a child and one count of attempted sexual conduct with a minor – both Class 3 felonies in the state of Arizona. Both charges involved attempted abuse of a now 24-year-old victim who reported to police that the incidents occurred over a 10-year time period starting in 1982.

The plea agreement called for seven years of supervised probation and nine months in jail, with credit for time Hunt had already served while awaiting trial.

The sentence handed down to Hunt by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge (Silvia Arellano) veered considerably from that agreement. Hunt was sentenced to 10 years of probation on each count, to be served concurrently, and an additional three months in Maricopa County Jail beginning March 1, 2006. Hunt will receive credit for none of the time that he already served toward his three month sentence.

As part of the agreement, Hunt must register as a sex offender if current state law requires that he do so and was specifically prohibited from accepting a position in his church that requires him to have contact with children as a “church figure.”

Hunt’s victim reportedly contacted police when Hunt accepted a leadership position in the LDS church that would involve direct contact with children.

Chuck Teegarden, spokesman for the Pinal County Attorney’s Office – which prosecuted Hunt – said the explanation for the variance between the plea agreement and the actual sentence lies in the Maricopa County Adult Probation presentencing report.

“The willingness or ability of a victim to participate in a trial is a very important consideration in these cases,” Teegarden said, referring to information contained in that presentencing report.”

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