A Utah woman has accused her mother’s former boyfriend of holding her captive in a remote cabin, where she claims she was forced to eat rat feces and engage in sex acts in order to be fed.
According to The Deccan Chronicle, the woman testified this week at a preliminary hearing to crimes that allegedly took place when she was a teenager and had traveled alone with her mother’s boyfriend Jared Stephen Morgan to Duchesne, Utah, where he had a cabin.
At the preliminary hearing, Judge Samuel Chiara found that there was probable cause to send Morgan to trial for five counts of aggravated sex abuse and one count of kidnapping, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.
Morgan is also reportedly facing 14 first-degree felony counts in another case in which he is accused of sexually assaulting two underage girls., who are sisters.
The woman claimed that Morgan began performing sex acts on her within a few days of their arrival to the cabin.
“I did not understand that I could say no,” she reportedly said. “I believed he was with my mother. I didn’t feel comfortable the entire time.”
On five occasions, she said, Morgan allegedly forced her to have sex with him in exchange for being given food and water. She said that he would have a gun at his hip during these encounters, and that he later gave her a can of cold ravioli. On other occasions, she said, she was forced to eat rat feces off the floor.
“I remember I was hungry and cold,” she said.
It is not entirely clear how the alleged victim and her mother’s boyfriend came to travel to the cabin without the girl’s mother. According to a September 2016 Salt Lake City Tribune report, the woman told investigators she was alone in the cabin with Morgan on two separate occasions, about a year apart. The first time, she said he invited her to take care of his puppies and “get away from life stress,” and that is when the first sexual assault took place.
In her recent testimony, the woman reportedly said that she was afraid to leave, not the she was physically prevented from leaving. But in the earlier Salt Like Tribune report, she reportedly claimed she was locked in a shed for several days. She said Morgan threatened to “end her” if she told her parents.
In this week’s testimony the woman reportedly admitted that she believed she was in love with Morgan during their first trip to the cabin.
According to the Tribune, a telephone hearing has been scheduled for early March to review evidence.