Summary
Bradley Spencer was a Mormon and Middleton city councilman in Idaho, who pleaded guilty of sexual battery of a minor.
Bradley Spencer owned Spencer’s Music Store in Middleton, Idaho. He employed a 17 year old female whom he groomed and later sexually abused, according to the victim. Spencer’s abuse of the victim began with keeping her late at work, giving her gifts, slapping her butt when she walked away, provided a secret cell phone, texting explicit messages and requesting nude photos of the girl and eventually started sexually assaulting the girl and raping her when she was unwilling to have sex, the victim said.
Spencer pleaded guilty and was sentenced to eight years in prison with the possibility of parole after 2 years. Bradley Spencer is a registered sex offender.
Sources
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1. Former councilman gets prison for sex with teen
CALDWELL -- A former Middleton city councilman and businessman was sentenced Tuesday to eight years in prison for his sexual relationship with an underage employee.
Fifty-six-year-old Bradley Spencer will have to spend at least two years behind bars before he is eligible for parole. Judge George Southworth rejected a request from the defendant's attorney to sentence Spencer to probation or time in the county jail under the work release program.
"Probation, in this court's opinion, does not address the serious nature of the crime," Southworth said.
Spencer resigned from his city council seat after his September arrest on sexual battery of a minor charges. He pleaded guilty to the charge in March.
Prosecutors say the defendant groomed a 17-year-old girl for sex as she worked for him at Spencer's Music in Middleton. The victim, identified only as J.S., said the attention from her boss started out seemingly innocuous.
"Brad started talking to me more," she said. "He would slap me on the butt whenever I walked away."
More: Former councilman pleads not guilty in teen sex case
The conduct escalated as Spencer continued to touch J.S. inappropriately, find excuses for her to stay late in the store alone with him, buy her gifts and ask for nude photos of her. J.S. said her boss turned controlling, forbidding her from dating and seeking to alienate her from her parents by telling her that they treated her "like a slave." When the victim's father put a curfew on her cellphone use, Spencer gave J.S. a new one so she could continue exchanging explicit photos and messages with him, instructing her to keep the device hidden from her parents.
The pair began having sex regularly. J.S. said in court Spencer would forcibly have sex with her even when she told him she did not want to.
J.S. told her parents about the abuse after her father discovered the secret cellphone Spencer had given her and saw explicit messages between the two.
"I couldn't take the stress anymore, the stress of lying or the stress of being raped every day," she testified.
Prosecutors say the abuse and its aftermath took a toll on J.S.: Her grades plummeted and she lost 30 pounds from stress. In addition, she said, friends turned on her, accusing her of lying about the abuse. Many days, J.S. said, she doesn't event want to leave her room.
"I have never felt so violated, hurt, worthless and alone," she said.
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J.S.'s father testified that Spencer had been a friend from church who taught Sunday school classes to his younger daughter and even looked after the family's animals when they were out of town. KTVB is not naming the father to avoid identifying the underage victim.
Read: Middleton city councilman resigns after sex crime arrest
"I trusted him because I knew him from church, I felt if you are given a position of authority in the church than you are worthy of that trust," he said.
Defense attorney Matt Roker asked J.S.'s father if he had influenced his daughter's recollection of what happened, noting she had originally given a "vastly different" account of the relationship.
But J.S.'s father replied the girl had been manipulated by her former boss.
"A 17-year-old girl and a 56-year-old man," he said. "If that's not a predatory relationship, I don't know what is."
Roker appealed to the judge to sentence Spencer to probation, arguing the relationship between J.S. and his client was consensual.
The lawyer said Spencer losing his seat as a councilman, his respect in the community and having to register as a sex offender was already "an extreme punishment," and Spencer was found to be at little risk to re-offend.
But Prosecutor Justin Paskett said any sentence less than prison would diminish the serious nature of the crime.
Spencer's position of trust and roles as a leader in his church and the community meant he crossed several "big, bright lines in the sand" when he made the decision to to pursue a sexual relationship with a minor, he argued.
Paskett said the sexual abuse was not a mistake or an accident.
"It happened slowly as the victim was desensitized and manipulated," he said.
More: Middleton councilman arrested for sexual battery
In a brief statement to the court, Spencer said he had taken full responsibility for his actions.
"I do wish and pray and hope that the family can move on, and certainly my family as well," he said. "I'm ashamed, I'm embarrassed. To say I'm sorry doesn't begin to cover the feelings that I have."
The judge told Spencer he had squandered the faith others had placed in him.
"The defendant was a trusted person; trusted by the victim's parents, trusted by the citizens in Middleton who elected him, trusted as a Sunday school teacher and trusted as an employer," he said.
Southworth said he felt a prison sentence was the only real option for sentence, noting that the scars left by sexual abuse of children often follow victims throughout their life.
"This is conduct every 56-year-old man should know: Engaging in such conduct with a minor will drastically affect that minor's life," he said.
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2. Bradley D. Spencer
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