The 19-year-old Florida cheerleader accused of having a lesbian affair with a 14-year-old has violated a court order to have no contact with her alleged victim, prosecutors said Thursday. A document that prosecutors filed with the judge overseeing the controversial case says Kaitlyn Hunt sent the younger girl more than 20,000 text messages, “lewd” photos and an explicit masturbation video even after Hunt was arrested and ordered not to contact her victim.
Accused sex offender Kaitlyn Hunt is comforted by her father at a May press conference.
Hunt was charged in February with two felony counts in the case in Florida, where the legal age of consent is 16. The case made national news in May when Hunt rejected a plea deal offered by state prosecutors that would have kept her out of prison in return for pleading guilty to a lesser felony charge. Hunt’s parents, Steven Hunt Jr. and Kelley Hunt Smith, launched an online “Free Kate” campaign that gathered widespread support from gay rights activists, including the group Equality Florida, as well as the Florida chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. The case was featured on NBC’s Today show, on CNN and other major news outlets.
As is customary in criminal cases, Hunt was ordered not to have contact with the alleged victim, who was a freshman at Sebastian River High School, where Hunt was an 18-year-old senior at the time. But in a document filed Thursday with Circuit Court Judge Robert Pegg, prosecutors said Hunt repeatedly violated that order, continuing the illegal sexual affair and attempting to persuade the victim not to provide evidence and testimony against her.
Kaitlyn Hunt’s mug shot after her February arrest on felony sex charges.
Hunt put an iPod in the younger girl’s locker at school, state attorney Bruce H. Colton said in the notification seeking revocation of Hunt’s bond. The iPod was used by Hunt to send more than 20,000 text messages, “lewd and lascivious” photos and at least one pornographic video to the younger girl, Colton said. “These photographs are explicit and depict [Hunt] nude, sometimes engaged in sex acts such as placing her fingers inside her vagina,” Colton wrote, while the video “explicitly depicts [Hunt] masturbating by rubbing her vagina with her fingers while moaning.”
Hunt also “coordinated secret meetings” with the younger girl, picking her up and driving “to a remote location where they would have intimate contact.” Such rendevous “have taken place as recently as two weeks ago,” Colton said the younger girl told Detective Jeremy Shepherd of the Indian River County Sheriff’s Office.
Teenage lesbian Kaitlyn Hunt was a popular cheerleader in Florida.
The notification document was filed one day after the prosecutor had offered a second plea bargain to Hunt on her 19th birthday. The prosecution alleges that both Hunt and her mother contacted the younger girl, evidently in an effort to influence her testimony. Hunt “covertly contacted her victim … continued intimate contact with her victim, threatened to blame the victim if her own misconduct is discovered, instructed her victim what to say to the prosecutor, solicited her victim to lie for her, and in general sought to obstruct the judicial process,” Colton wrote, saying that “the misconduct of the defendant and [her mother] is severely threatening the integrity of the judicial process.”
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL DOCUMENT
Hunt and the 14-year-old girl first had sex in December 2012 in a school restroom toilet stall, where the two teenagers “started kissing,” then Hunt removed the younger girl’s pants and “put her finger inside of [the victim's] vagina,” according to a Sheriff’s Office affidavit. On the night of Jan. 4, the affidavit says, the younger girl ran away from home and spent the night at Hunt’s house, where the two girls “put their fingers inside of each other’s vaginas, put their mouths on each other’s vaginas, and both of them used a vibrator on each other to insert it in each other’s vaginas.”
In June, Kaitlyn Hunt and her supporters marched in the New York City Gay Pride parade.
The “Free Kate” movement drew widespread support — including more than 30,000 signatures on an online petition — when Hunt’s parents first went public about the case in May. Supporters depicted Hunt as an innocent victim of homophobia, being prosecuted for a “schoolgirl crush” or a “high-school romance.” At first, it was widely claimed that the two girls had been 17 and 15 at the time of the affair, rather than 18 and 14.
However, once the Sheriff’s Office affidavit was published and more facts about the case became known, many of Hunt’s supporters lost their enthusiasm for the cause. Joan McCarter, a staff writer at the popular progressive site Daily Kos, retracted her support for the “Free Kate” campaign. Lesbian writer T.J. Askren wrote May 22 at her Red Treehouse blog: “Kaitlyn Hunt is not a lesbian hero. She is not a gay martyr. … Getting in trouble for finger f*cking your underage girlfriend in the school bathroom is not a noble cause.” Conservative writer Matt Philbin of the Media Research Center said Hunt’s supporters were using gay rights as a “Get Out of Jail Free” card for statutory rape.
Facts about the case were compiled at a site called SupportHonesty.net, and some gay-rights groups — including the local chapter of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) — refused to back the “Free Kate” campaign. However, Hunt’s most enthusiastic supporters have compared her to civil-rights icon Rosa Parks.
Reacting to the prosecutor’s motion to revoke Kaitlyn Hunt’s bond, her attorney Julia Graves issued a statement late Thursday: “As with any high profile case there is great public interest in the various details of the investigation. However, it is customary as the process unfolds that allegations will be made, but they must be proven and substantiated in a court of law. We continue to work on Ms. Hunt’s defense today, the same as we did yesterday, and will continue tomorrow.”
READ MORE:
Keith Carson, Vero News: Hunt violates conditions of pretrial release by sending lewd images to victim
Elliott Jones, Palm Beach Post: Kaitlyn Hunt accused of violating terms of pretrial release in Sebastian teen sex case