PHOENIX — An Arkansas man has been sentenced to 14 years in prison after he traveled to Phoenix in 2022 with the plan to sexually abuse a 13-year-old girl.
Andrew Butler, 49, was recently sentenced in Arizona after a jury convicted him of attempted coercion and traveling across state lines to abuse a minor.
The defendant was arrested when he arrived at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport and investigators reported finding him in possession of contraceptives and sex devices.
Before his arrest, Butler had spent weeks messaging someone on Instagram he thought was a 13-year-old girl. The person was actually an undercover FBI agent posing as a minor online.
He told law enforcement he thought the individual was 18 but the messages he sent suggest otherwise.
Court records show Butler had sexually explicit conversations with the agent and often alluded to the fact that he could get in trouble if anyone knew about their messages.
"Butler’s aggressive and relentless pursuit of who he believed to be a 13-year-old girl is extremely concerning and demonstrates a heightened danger to the public," prosecutors wrote in court filings.
Butler additionally tried getting the fake 13-year-old to speak to a girl he knew who had had sexual encounters with older men and not gotten caught.
"Butler intended to use another minor to further peer-pressure and manipulate (the 13-year-old) in an effort to fulfill his fantasy while protecting his risk of exposure," prosecutors wrote.
After he was detained in Phoenix, investigators searched Butler's phone and noticed he had made online searches on Arizona's statutory rape laws and looked up the address of where he thought the 13-year-old's family lived.
Butler will be placed on supervised release for life upon completing his prison sentence.
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