Utah sex offender charged with kidnapping teen girl from Arizona he met on TikTok
Feb 7, 2023, 8:57 PM | Updated: Feb 13, 2023, 2:47 pm
The wife of a Spanish Fork restaurant owner charged with sexually abusing a teen employee has now been arrested and booked into the Utah County Jail after police said she threatened the alleged victim. (File photo)
(File photo)
WEST VALLEY CITY, Utah — A registered sex offender in Utah convicted of sexual extortion of a child is now facing new charges for allegedly kidnapping an Arizona girl.
Jordan Daniel Sorenson, 26, was charged Tuesday in 3rd District Court with aggravated kidnapping and rape, both first-degree felonies. The case is being prosecuted by the Utah Attorney General’s Office.
On Jan. 31, a probation officer in Arizona contacted police in West Valley after a 14-year-old girl’s ankle monitor was cut off and she was observed getting into a car in Mohave County, Ariz., registered to Sorenson, who lives in West Valley.
Sorenson is on the Utah Sex Offender and Kidnap Registry for a 2020 conviction of aggravated sexual extortion of a child. In that case, he solicited explicit pictures from a 13-year-old girl on social media, verbally berated her and threatened to post pictures of her online if she didn’t send more. He was sentenced to up to five years at the Utah State Prison, but that sentence was suspended and he was placed on four years of probation.
Agents with Adult Probation and Parole, along with members of the Utah Attorney General’s Office, located Sorenson at his work and took him into custody. They then went to his residence where the missing teen was found in his basement, according to police.
Investigators soon learned that Sorenson found the girl on TikTok and started commenting on her posts, the charges state. He later began directly communicating with her using Snapchat.
“Sorenson said he was going to come see (the girl) in Arizona and take her away. (The girl) did not expect Sorenson to come and take her away. (She) did not plan to go with Sorenson,” prosecutors stated in their charges.
But on Jan. 27, Sorenson drove to Arizona, met up with the girl and used scissors to cut off her ankle monitor, the charges state. The girl says she agreed to sneak out and meet Sorenson but had no plans to leave with him, according to the charges.
“Sorenson made (the girl) promise to not leave him or stop talking to him or else ‘bad things’ would happen. (The girl) did not feel safe with Sorenson,” the charges state.
On the drive back to Utah, Sorenson went through Kingman, Ariz., and Las Vegas and raped the girl twice, the charges state. Sorenson also “became paranoid when (her) family was sending her text messages asking where she was” and put her phone in airplane mode and then bought her another phone, according to the charges. Once he got back to his house, Sorenson told the girl to “lie to his roommates about her age and stay in his room to hide from his probation officer,” as well as “not to leave,” according to the charges.
The girl told police she did not flee the residence “because she thought Sorenson could track her using the phone,” the charges state. She was also sexually assaulted each night she was with Sorenson in Utah, according to prosecutors.
“(The girl) did not feel safe with Sorenson and wanted to go home but did not feel like she could leave,” the charge state.
Prosecutors also note in their charges that Sorenson was convicted in 2017 of committing a similar crime after he befriended a girl in Wyoming and took her to Colorado, where he engaged in sexual activity with her.
