Provo woman arrested on suspicion of sexual abuse and child trafficking | News, Sports, Jobs

A Provo woman was arrested after detectives received an internet tip that she had sexually abused a child, later identified as her own daughter, and also uploaded content to the internet, Provo police said in a news release Friday afternoon.

After an arrest warrant was approved, the 38-year-old woman was taken into custody and questioned by police on Thursday, the release said. She was later booked into the Utah County Jail on a variety of felony charges.

To protect the alleged victim's privacy, the Daily Herald is not releasing the woman's name.

According to an affidavit, the woman was arrested on suspicion of child trafficking (42 possible counts), aggravated sexual exploitation of a minor (30 counts), sodomy of a child (two counts) and aggravated sexual abuse of a child (two counts). These are all possible first-degree felonies. As of Friday evening, no formal charges had been filed against the woman.

The indictment states that the tip was received through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). Attached to the tip were files believed to be child sexual abuse material that had been uploaded to an account on the instant messaging app Kik that allegedly belonged to the woman.

The account information the service provided to authorities included a username and email address that NCMEC and police linked to the woman, according to the affidavit. The document states that NCMEC used the suspects' Facebook account to determine that they “had access to a child who visually resembles the child depicted in the uploaded files.”

The indictment also states that the woman told police she used the instant messaging app for “adult sex talk.” She later told investigators she took photos and videos of the victim and shared them with another suspect, identified in the news release as Chris Seamann.

Seamann, a 52-year-old registered sex offender, was arrested Friday morning in Mesquite, Nevada, and an extradition warrant to Utah has been requested, according to the Provo police news release. He was arraigned Friday in 4th District Court on charges of sodomy of a child and rape of a child, first-degree felonies, three counts of sexual abuse of a child, second-degree felonies, and lewdness with a child, a third-degree felony.

The woman reportedly told police she met with Seamann in person “approximately 10 times,” beginning when her daughter was “five or six years old,” and claimed he sexually abused her on those occasions. She also told police he allegedly paid her to create/share child sexual abuse material, some of which depicted her performing sexual acts on her child, according to the affidavit.

She told police that the most recent case of personal abuse involving Seamann occurred in Springville on September 3, according to the indictment.

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