Christopher Michael Whittaker appears in a booking photo. (Kenton County Sheriff’s Office)
A Kentucky man will spend the rest of his life in prison – and, legally, then some – for physically and sexually abusing multiple children and hurting an animal to make criminal sexual fetish videos.
Christopher Michael Whittaker, 39, previously pleaded guilty to 92 separate offenses, according to the Kenton County Commonwealth’s Attorney Office. Earlier this week, he was given 10 life sentences.
Most of those offenses are related to the physical and sexual abuse of his girlfriend’s children; she is also charged. But eight of the offenses concern the torture of the family’s pet cat, prosecutors said.
“I’m limited in what I can say about this defendant because he still has similar charges pending in Grant County, Kentucky, but no matter what happens there, the world is a better place with Christopher Whittaker behind bars,” Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Emily J. Arnzen said in comments reported by Cincinnati, Ohio-based CBS and The CW affiliate WKRC, which serves the broader metropolitan area.
“We told everyone we’d bury Christopher Whittaker under the prison since the case began, and this is as deep as Kentucky law allows us to dig,” Arnzen added.
Court documents provided by prosecutors to Law&Crime detail, broadly and specifically, some of the condemned man’s depravity.
Between October and November 2016, Whittaker took part in and sometimes directed the abuse of his girlfriend’s then-7-year-old son, who law enforcement described as “non-verbal” and who “has a feeding tube placed in his stomach,” one criminal complaint says.
Between January 2017 and July 2021, he repeatedly raped, sodomized, promoted in various sexual performances, and otherwise sexually abused Michelle Bray’s daughter on video, beginning when she was under 12, Whittaker’s 24-page indictment says.
Starting in September 2021 and ending in January 2022, he repeatedly tortured the family’s cat, according to the indictment.
All of the above crimes were captured on video, prosecutors say.
And that was apparently the point.
A court document provided to Law&Crime explains that Whittaker admitted to having a “foot fetish” and engaging in “trampling.” Bray, who is a co-defendant and is awaiting her trial that begins next week, also allegedly told police that she and Whittaker “engage in the ‘intimate’ act of crushing or trampling,” described as “a BDSM fetish in which one derives sexual pleasure from being walked on or watching another person be walked on.”
According to one of the complaints, Whittaker and Bray conspire to have the mother walk on her 7-year-old disabled son in three videos.
Another complaint details a series of videos in which Bray and her daughter, wearing bikinis, allegedly take turns stepping on Whittaker, who tells the mother and daughter “what to do.”
Numerous other videos show Whittaker raping Bray’s daughter at numerous points in her life – beginning before she was 12.
The defendant initially blamed one of the victims.
“He stated he had been producing these videos for approximately two years at the victim’s request,” Whittaker’s original criminal complaint reads. “In one of the videos, the arrestee can be observed holding a pet cat down on his bed as he instructed the 14-year-old victim, who was bare-breasted and wearing only underwear bottoms and high heels, to walk across the bed to where he was holding the cat down and step on the cat to the point where the cat screeched in discomfort. This action was repeated in the video several times.”
Between October 2021 and January 2022, Whittaker also engaged in numerous instances of possession of material portraying a sexual performance by a minor, according to the indictment.
Bray is charged with one count of human trafficking, three counts of complicity to criminal abuse, four counts of complicity to promoting a sexual performance by a minor, and one count of complicity to sexual abuse. Her trial is slated to begin on Sept. 26. She faces 70 years in prison.
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