A 33-year-old Utah County man has been sentenced to prison for raping a 12-year-old girl.
Jeffrey Nicolas Nyman, of Payson, had pleaded guilty in 4th District Court to second-degree felony counts of kidnapping and sexual abuse of a child.
On Wednesday, Judge Lynn Davis sentenced Nyman to concurrent terms of 1 to 15 years.
In November 2016, Nyman picked up the victim from her junior high school in Taylorsville and took her to a Utah County hotel room, where they had sex, according to charging documents.
The police were called that day after the girl’s parents could not find her and she hadn’t been at school. The girl’s classmate told police that she said she was skipping school that day to be with her 20-year-old boyfriend “and they were going to a hotel together for the day,” charging documents state.
Nyman had been communicating with the young girl through social media applications, police said, including the dating app Plenty of Fish.
Police found messages that were “highly sexual” between Nyman and the girl that were sent the evening before they went to the hotel, according to charging documents.
The girl later told police that she let Nyman have sex with her “because she loves him,” charging documents state. She also told police that Nyman knew “literally everything” about her, including her age.
But when Nyman was interviewed by police, he said he wasn’t aware of how young the girl was, and he denied having intercourse with her.
Nyman was initially charged with six felonies: two counts of rape of a child, two counts of sodomy on a child, two counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child and a count of child kidnapping, all first-degree felonies punishable by up to life in prison. He also was charged with second-degree felony enticing or luring a minor by internet or text.
