Parents to plead guilty to sex charges

Greg Tuttle

Monday, July 10, 2000 | 11:09 a.m.

The parents of three Las Vegas teenagers have agreed to plead guilty in District Court following allegations they sold their children into sexual servitude for six years.

The man and woman agreed to enter the pleas Friday during a preliminary hearing in Justice Court in which a woman testified that 64-year-old Donald Dustman allegedly took pornographic pictures and videos of the girls for years and paid the parents monthly in $20 bills.

The parents are not being named by the Sun in order to protect the identities of the children, now ages 18, 15 and 15. One of the younger victims is a niece of the couple placed in their care.

The 47-year-old man agreed to plead guilty to two counts of sexual assault of a minor under 16 and one count of felony child abuse or neglect. He faces a possible sentence of up to 20 years.

The 37-year-old woman will enter a guilty plea to a single charge of felony child abuse or neglect. The charge carries a minimum sentence of probation and a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

The couple is scheduled to enter the pleas July 25. In exchange for their guilty pleas, prosecutors will drop nearly 40 similar charges filed against the couple.

Dustman was charged in April with 78 counts, including sexual assault of a victim under 16, possession of child pornography and use of a minor in the production of pornography. His trial is scheduled to begin July 24.

The plea agreements were reached midway through a preliminary hearing Friday before Justice of the Peace Douglas Smith that included testimony from two witnesses. Chief Deputy District Attorney Doug Herndon said the plea agreements resulted, in part, on the strength of the testimony from a 26-year-old woman who said Dustman described to her his sex-for-money relationship with the victims and their parents.

Blanch Jenner testified she met Dustman in the mid-1990s and soon was accepting money from him to pose for pornographic pictures and videos. She also agreed to engage in sexual acts in Dustman's Nellis Boulevard apartment with one of the victims, whom she believed to be 18. The girl was actually 12.

"I guess I didn't get to know her the right way, because I didn't know she was under 18," Jenner said. "She didn't look young. I was young myself."

Numerous photographs and a video allegedly depicting Jenner and the girl engaged in sexual acts were recovered by police. Prosecutors have granted Jenner immunity in exchange for her testimony.

Jenner said Dustman told her he had known the victim's parents for years and took care of the family's financial needs in order to have access to the children.

"He said he was paying the parents to be with the kids, and they knew about (the sexual abuse)," Jenner testified.

The woman said she only met the oldest girl a few times, and never met the parents. But Jenner said she was with Dustman on several occasions when he withdrew large amounts of cash from a bank machine he allegedly said were payments to the family.

Jenner said the parents also were paid by Dustman to commit sex acts with their children.

"I believe he watched," she said. "I don't remember him telling me about any Polaroids or videotapes."

Metro Police Detective John Stewart said the case broke in April, when one of the victims told a teacher she was being sexually abused. Interviews with all three girls lead police to Dustman.

During a search of a storage unit rented by Dustman, police allegedly found 1,000 pornographic pictures of the three victims. Of 200 pornographic videotapes confiscated, three included scenes involving the victims, Stewart said.

Dustman allegedly told a friend he was paying the parents of the victims $1,500 a month to not report the abuse, which began in about 1994, Stewart said.

The man's defense attorney, Osvaldo Fumo, said after the hearing Friday his client maintains he is innocent, but decided to accept the plea agreement in order to spare his daughter from having to testify against her parents.

"He wanted to save her that anguish," Fumo said.