Palmer man jailed for videotaping sex with children

PALMER — Alaska State Troopers have arrested a 28-year-old Palmer man, charging him with molesting three girls, all about age 6, and videotaping one of them in a sexual act.

According to an affidavit Alaska State Troopers Investigator Sherry Ferno filed in the case against Christopher Byers, the allegations came to light when two of the girls, who live in Anchorage, spoke to police there on Sept. 26.

The girls, now middle-school-aged, said that when they were 5 or 6 years old, Byers had preyed on them. Another reported sex acts, the other said he’d tried to perform sex acts, but he stopped when she resisted.

Detectives went to Byers’ house, where he admitted sexually abusing those two girls and to abusing another 6-year-old girl in Palmer at least six times in the past year. He also told investigators that he had twice videotaped the Palmer girl performing a sex act — once at home and once in the bathroom of a local grocery store — on his iPhone and downloaded the video to his laptop.

When the Palmer girl’s mother confronted him about the Anchorage abuse allegations he deleted the video, Ferno wrote, “knowing what he did was wrong. Byers stated that he knew the police would eventually come and talk to him.”

The mother told troopers that after she’d confronted Byers she would not let him be alone with the girl.

Ferno writes that on Oct. 2, troopers searched Byers’ phone and laptop, finding five separate videos of the girl.

“I compared the background on the videos that Sgt. Wilson located to the background of the (grocery store) restroom and the garage at the Byers residence. The videos appear to have been filmed in these two locations,” Ferno wrote.

Byers was arrested and charged with first-degree sexual abuse of a minor, unlawful exploitation of a minor and tampering with evidence.

He was arrested Friday and booked at the Anchorage Jail with bail withheld. He will need to find a third party to watch him before he can be released.

As of Monday evening he was still listed in jail records as an inmate of the Anchorage facility. Court records show he made his first court appearance at that facility’s in-house courtroom that afternoon.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.