A 21-year-old apologized for the trauma he caused a family after he lured a 12-year-old away from her Idaho home and molested her.
Austin Holbrook, a former security guard, previously admitted to molesting a girl that he took across three states and stashed in his bedroom for nearly a week.
“I want to apologize for my actions and the impact they had,” Holbrook said during a recent sentencing hearing. “I made a series of choices that I regret.”
The crime had left a mark on a family about 270 miles away in Nampa, Idaho. The girl’s stepfather said he held the child in a room with little food or water and sexually assaulted her.
Even after coming back home, the girl needed treatment to recover. Her mother described the experience as an emotional roller coaster.
“My family will never be the same,” her stepfather said. “You’re a predator.”
Holbrook, who is still facing charges in Idaho, faced between 2 1/2 and 3 1/2 years in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of second-degree child molestation.
“It is a tragedy with massive consequences,” Judge Jackie Shea Brown told Holbrook. “It has a ripple effect for folks who are caregivers for people who went through something so traumatic and massively destructive.”
She believed Holbrook took advantage of his victim’s vulnerability.
She followed the agreement and sentenced Holbrook to three years and two months in prison.
He was still in the custody of the Washington Department of Corrections as of Friday.
Holbrook met the Nampa, Idaho, preteen through the Hily dating app, court documents said. The app’s users are supposed to be 18 or older, according to the service’s community rules.
After talking with the girl, he arranged to pick her up. He drove from Kennewick to Idaho in his father’s Dodge Durango in March 2024 and picked her up after she sneaked out of her house, according to court documents.
He took her to Kennewick and made her hide in his room while his mom was home. She could only leave to shower and eat after his mom left.
A neighbor noticed Holbrook’s suspiciously young “girlfriend” and called police, court documents said. Detectives found Holbrook and the girl at the East 16th Avenue home.
A medical exam found she was malnourished and dehydrated.
She told investigators Holbrook also had been contacting her 13- and 14-year-old friends through the same app but he hasn’t been charged with any other crimes.
While the court documents don’t say what his new job was, his LinkedIn profile says his most recent job was in Boardman, Ore., as an unarmed security guard.
He was no longer working there as of November 2023.
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