After a 14-year-old girl confided in a man she met online that her adoptive father was raping her, he asked her to record the assault to help prove the abuse to the police.
Wisconsin resident Bryan Rogers began talking to the teenager using the online game Roblox in December, the Washington Post reports. The girl told him that her adoptive father was sexually molesting her, that her mother did not believe her when she told her about the abuse, and that she was suicidal. Rogers said he would help her but only if she recorded the assault to use as proof. “I know you don’t want to do it but I don’t exactly want to see your dad rape you either,” he said in a message obtained by the FBI. “But we need clear video evidence.”
The girl did not want to record the rape but, according to their messages, Rogers pressed her. “He’s been molesting you for 12 years … If that’s not enough of a reason to get the video then idk what else to tell you,” he wrote. She recorded a video of what police believe to be her adoptive father Randall Pruitt raping her and shared the footage with Rogers.
On January 13, the girl left her home in Tennessee in the middle of the night with Rogers and drove back to his house in Wisconsin. When her mother discovered she was not in her bed in the morning, a search began and authorities eventually located Rogers. When police arrived at his house he admitted to talking to the teenager but denied she was with him. It wasn’t until police came back later and searched the house that they found the girl hiding in a basement closet and arrested Rogers.
Rogers said he did not share the footage immediately with police because “he thought it was blurry and would not hold up in court.” Rogers faces a minimum sentence of 15 years and a maximum of 30 years in prison for sexual exploitation of a minor for the purpose of producing a visual depiction. Pruitt has been charged with rape. His bond is set at $2 million.