Probable cause found in lewd conduct case

SANDPOINT — A Bonner County man with 24 previous criminal felonies now faces a lewd conduct charge.

Judge Justin Julian found probable cause to send Jason Mathew Rivers, 42, to First District Court for two sexual assault charges.

Rivers is suspected of one count of lewd conduct, and one count of sexual battery stemming from events in December 2020 and February 2021.

“He introduced me to meth by calling it speed,” the victim testified at Rivers’ preliminary hearing Wednesday. “I didn’t know it was meth at the time, all I knew was that it was called speed. Then I was always not in the right mindset to say no to anything.”

The victim came forward to a law enforcement officer in December 2020, in an affidavit filed by the officer, she stated that she and Rivers had been sexually active, and that she had not told Rivers ‘no’ and didn’t want him to “get in trouble.”

She reaffirmed this claim during Wednesday’s hearing, “I was under the influence of meth. So I didn’t really say no.”

The officer informed the victim’s mother of “concerning messages” between Rivers and the victim on her school-issued laptop. The officer was made aware of the messages by the schools I.T. in December 2020. The laptop was confiscated shortly after.

According to the victim’s statements in court documents, Rivers is alleged to have assaulted the victim for the first time in her residence in December 2020. Rivers drove to the victim’s house after dropping off the victim’s mother at a store while they were both out running an errand.

“He dropped my mom off at the store and said he forgot his wallet at my house and he really didn’t,” she testified.

In an interview with a forensic investigator, the victim recalled the same incident, alleging that after the assault, Rivers and the victim said that they loved each other before Rivers left to pick up her mother.

The victim also stated that she had been tricked into smoking methamphetamine by Rivers. In her statements to the investigator, she said she had been “naive and gullible, and didn’t know what she was doing,” and that if she hadn’t been smoking, she would not have engaged with Rivers. Even though Rivers was 41 at the time, and she was a minor, she said she still wanted a relationship with him.

Rivers was a friend of the family. He would stay at the house whenever he experienced utility problems at his residence in Cocolalla. Rivers would help with chores and cooking during his visits.

During this time, the victim and her mother would argue, sometimes to the point of physical altercation. The victim’s mother asked if Rivers could “step in” to “break up” the fights between the victim and herself, according to the mother’s statements in court records.

One such argument caused the victim to run away from home in February 2021 after her mother allegedly locked her out of the house, according to the victim’s statements to the forensic investigator.

The victim contacted Rivers, asking him to pick her up. She then spent the following week at Rivers’s residence, according to court documents.

Rivers, in an interview with the same forensic investigator, denied any sexual relationship with the victim. He said the victim ran away from home because of an argument with her mother, and that he was sent by the mother to look for the victim. He told the investigator that he found her beside the road crying. He didn’t tell anyone that he had found her, but instead took her back to his house. The next day, he took her to school, but she did not return home. That’s when the mother registered the victim as a missing person.

One week later, Rivers returned the victim to her house, according to the victim’s interview with the forensic investigator. She called running away from home a “week vacation” away from her mother.

The victim decided to pursue charges against Rivers after learning that he had denied any kind of sexual relationship. She became infuriated, saying that she could not believe that Rivers was “not 'man enough' to admit the truth.”

On May 13, Rivers was arrested on unrelated charges. He has 37 previous cases in the Idaho courts system for possession of a controlled substance and paraphernalia, a variety of driving violations, burglary, petit theft, battery, and multiple no contact order violations.

Rivers is scheduled to be arraigned on the charges on Aug. 16.

As defined by the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, “Domestic violence is the willful intimidation, physical assault, battery, sexual assault, and/or other abusive behavior as part of a systematic pattern of power and control perpetrated by one intimate partner against another.”

Many Idahoans face domestic violence. According to the NCADV, one in three Idahoans experience domestic violence -- accounting for 42% of all violent crime charges. For more information or resources, go to their website at ncadv.org. In case of an emergency, call 911, or call the 24-hour Idaho Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-669-3176