A prominent member of the GOP state legislative leadership in West Virginia has been arrested on charges of enticing a child.
According to local news station WSAZ, David Elliott Pritt, a high school teacher in Fayette County who serves as assistant house majority leader in the state House of Delegates, used a popular children’s gaming platform to lure his teenage victim, who has not been named for privacy reasons.
The victim “stated they began talking to Pritt on the online game Roblox and then their conversations moved to Snapchat,” said the report, noting that the online conversations “gradually became more personal, with each sharing their personal lives and problems with each other.”
According to the complaint, “By the end of the school year, the victim stated Pritt had told them he loved them,” and the online talks moved to exchanging explicit images, and then in-person meetings that included at least five to 10 separate instances of physical contact and abuse.
Pritt told the victim that if “the state police show up and take your phone and mine and open up hell in our lives … it would very much not be low key. It would be in the news. It would be awful. For both of us. And I would lose my entire life,” according to the complaint.
A spokesperson for the West Virginia House of Delegates issued a statement saying, “While these are disturbing allegations and we all should be concerned about the welfare of this student, there is a presumption of innocence and a legal process that must be permitted to proceed; the Delegate remains a Delegate unless or until he resigns or the House as a body takes action to remove him from the seat to which he was elected.”
Disturbing cases of state and local politicians being charged with illegal contact with children have happened in the past. In 2022, Joel Koskan, a Republican running for state Senate in South Dakota, was charged with abuse of a young girl that allegedly went on for years.
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