Man Charged With Beating Pregnant Teenager

A man in Utah was charged Friday with attempted homicide in the beating of a pregnant teenager who police say asked for the pummeling in an effort to abort her six-month-old fetus.

Deputy Uintah County Attorney Mark Thomas said he filed the felony charge against Arron N. Harrison, 21, who was arrested Thursday and jailed in lieu of $10,000 bail.

Prosecutors are still weighing possible charges against the 17-year-old girl, who is also in custody. Authorities haven't disclosed her name.

"I haven't decided who's more at fault," Mark Watkins, police chief of Naples, 130 miles east of Salt Lake City, told The Associated Press. "She was just as cold as the assailant - we're not going to treat her as a victim."

Thomas said Harrison is expected to appear in court Tuesday and faces one to 15 years in prison if convicted.

Harrison pummeled the girl's abdomen in an effort to cause a miscarriage, Watkins said.

"Her intention was, in fact, to abort the child - to terminate the pregnancy," he said.

The fetus survived, but doctors won't know for certain what injuries it may have sustained until it is born.

The girl spent a day in a hospital before her arrest and is being held at a juvenile detention center, Watkins said.

Thomas said the beating took place late Tuesday, and that the girl initially told her family she had been mugged by an unknown assailant.

The family called police, who got the girl to speak truthfully about what happened, Watkins said.

He said Harrison was an acquaintance of the girl and is not the father of the child.

Neither Thomas nor Watkins knew if either of the two had a lawyer.

[httpwwwnews]

Everything about this is extremely disturbing.

It's hard to imagine the desperation someone would have to feel, to ask someone to beat them up, let alone pummel their pregnant abdomen and face a horrific termination to a pregnancy. Surely this girl knew that she had other options if she did not want to raise her child herself? It makes you wonder why she felt she had to resort to this violent act.

And the man that did it? He has to be mentally ill to actually do such a thing. No normal thinking person would do an action so warped and cruel.

[barbaram99]

People call it what it is..lazy parents too busy to care that their girl children are laying with males when they are able to breed. They have babies cos no one is willing to step up to the plate and put their foot down..
I was a teen once. I was not allowed to dress as my peers did. in the clothes that were were miin skirts ete. They were barred. I did not buy my clothes. The foster parenets did..
I could not see what other girls were wearing.
I was home when not in school. No I did not date. I did not have friends. Boys were off limits,.My fosters patents were in their 50s and 60s, When I was in high school.
Where was that girl's parents. Surely they did not allow her to run wild did they. CHURCH GIRLS ARE THE WORST AS THEY THINK IT WON'T HAPPEN TO THEM. iT DOES.
Babies are living things that are demaning helpness little beings.
The girls' life changes once she has a child.That child is first, GIRLS NEED TO LET HAVING CHILDREN ON HOLD. Yt is more important to get an education and the skills needed first.SOME GIRLS ARE BABY CRAZY AS WELL AS BOY CRAZY. I never was.

[barbaram99]

Where was thr giel's parents in all this? Surely they haf to be aware her periods have stopped and the morning sickness etc. I am 54. We all pay to educate the child in the school systems in the state we each live in. Even us that never had children. Children should not be having babies,
UT is mostly mormon. They don't believe in sexx education,no birth control. The girls are groomed for babies. I was a mormon and left it. i had to. No teen should have babies. I am a Mainer . I live in Seattle. Parents need to dtep up to the plate and address this issue. Girls know what that period is for. So do males. When I was a teen I had a dress code in the foster home and school. I was not allowed to wear clothes that did not cover the body properly. I was not raiaed in the church.. Babies can wait. They are for adults. Teens need to wait. No boy is worth it. They will walk. The parents may throw the girl out.if she is carrying a child. etc. I have heard it all at my age, I never wanted children I could not care for as a multi handicapped person..

[kansas1946]

So if a girl goes to a doctor to get an abortion it is ok but in this case you are going to arrest the girl?? Are you crazy. Are there doctors in Utah that could have performed an abortion for this girl, or is that the problem, she didn't have access. There is something really weird about this whole thing.

[barbaram99]

What did the girls 'fore abortion was legal..They used wire coat hangers I was told. I was told horror stories. Back alley abortions.That is what I heard..

[Ankhorite]

This is what happens when legal abortion is not easily available. The same thing happened in my high school outside of Chicago in the early 1970's. Desperate girls would ASK their boyfriends to beat them up.

What, exactly, do the police intend to charge the woman with? The reporter should have found out.

[tommynutz]

They should have taken their hoover vaccum and attached a couple spinning razors to the end and jammed it up in her.

Just like the real doctors!

[tommynutz]

Why is this a crime? We have a president that is full support of fetus death. I demand Obama step up and abolve both of them of all wrong doing.

On top of that the state should pay for their abortion for their troubles.

[aka_KJB]

My daughter, barely out of being a teenager herself, is due to deliver very soon. Not a similar situation at all except for age as the child is wanted, loved and eagerly anticipated by everyone involved. But we have had a scare with the child's kidneys which, while they turned out to not be as big a problem as doctor's feared still don't look right in the scans. Then there's the pocket of fluid in the brain they recently discovered that has us all worried, even though everything about the baby's development seems to be on track and it doesn't seem to have impaired any functions that we can tell. I support a right to choice and if this kid didn't want her child bad enough to get someone else to beat it out of her, then for crying out loud let her get an abortion. Or have somewhere for her to go where she'll be taken care of, have a healthy child and let that child be raised by someone who gives a rat's a$$. Unfortunately, at the moment, neither choice is readily available for most.

[barbaram99]

jane this is America. Here we each have the right to worship as we see fit. We don't have sharia law. I have never heard of it. We will not have it here. It is wrong to for ye to stone girls. I am not a church goer. i don't know why this girl at the centre of this story had a male hit her. I don't live by an old book at hates. jane it is the male that rapes the female. Yer mixed up dear. A buqa,,I dob't know what that is,,I am legally blind.