Kansas City woman sentenced to 45 years in prison for sexual exploitation of children
A Kansas City woman was sentenced in federal court Tuesday to serve 45 years in prison for sexually exploiting two children.
Both Jessica Ann Young, 34, and her husband, Houston Wade Young, 37, were sentenced this year to serve lengthy prison sentences for cases in U.S. District Court involving the sexual abuse of children.
Houston Young was sentenced in July to life in prison after he pleaded guilty to one count of sexual exploitation of a minor in January. Jessica Young pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor in March. Her sentence was handed down Tuesday.
Jessica Young’s court-appointed attorney declined to comment Tuesday.
Houston Young was previously convicted of first-degree child molestation in Wright County in 2005 and of possession of child pornography in Jackson County in 2016, and was involuntarily committed into a state program for sex offenders in 2021, prosecutors said.
The two were charged after authorities in Vernon County searched Houston Young’s jail cell in March 2020 while he was being detained there and found a phone that contained child pornography, according to court documents. At the time, he was being detained pending a civil proceeding to determine whether he would be civilly committed as a sexually violent predator, prosecutors said.
The FBI analyzed the phone and allegedly found texts between the couple that discussed the sexual abuse of a child — who authorities identified as a 7-year-old boy — and two pornographic images Jessica Young had sent to Houston Young of that child. They also found Houston Young had sent images of child pornography to his wife and to a 16-year-old girl who later told police they had met through an online game.
In interviews, the 7-year-old said Jessica Young had taken nude photos of him, and another child — a 13-year-old boy — and said she had sexually abused him, investigators said. In an interview with the FBI, Jessica Young allegedly admitted she had sent the images to her husband and said she had abused the two children on multiple occasions at a home in Clay County, according to court documents.
This story was originally published November 12, 2024 at 3:27 PM.
