One of the five images of child pornography Florida Gators quarterback Jalen Kitna possessed was of a prepubescent girl engaged in a sex act with an adult man, according to the Gainesville Police Department.
That’s among the details revealed in an arrest report, obtained Thursday morning by the Tampa Bay Times, about the complaints against the 19-year-old Kitna.
The investigation began in June with a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children into images of child pornography being shared on the messaging system Discord. Gainesville police received the case in July. The user’s IP address and phone number helped lead investigators to Kitna.
The report said Kitna shared that image of a prepubescent girl and another of a pubescent female. “So young junior” are among the words written on both pictures. He told authorities that he thought they were legal because he found them online.
When police searched Kitna’s phone, they found three more images of two nude pubescent juveniles in the shower, according to the report. All three of those images appear to be self-produced and were saved onto his cell phone last December. The report did not estimate their ages.
Kitna told police that he was in servers that discuss, solicit and distribute child sexual abuse material, but he “tries to shy away from it,” the report said. Kitna also said he had been in groups on the message system Kik that distributed similar material and that he “might have accidentally downloaded” those types of items but would delete them.
Kitna was arrested Wednesday on five complaints related to possessing child pornography. He was also indefinitely suspended from the football team.
Kitna made his first court appearance Thursday. After more than an hour, a judge set his bond at $80,000. Kitna is not allowed to use the internet or have unsupervised contact with minors.
The former three-star recruit and son of longtime NFL quarterback Jon Kitna appeared in four games for the Gators this season as a redshirt freshman. He completed 10 of his 14 passes for 181 yards and a touchdown.
Kitna was No. 2 on UF’s depth chart. If starter Anthony Richardson decides to leave early for the NFL draft and skip the postseason (as top prospects often do), Kitna could have been in line for his first career start in UF’s undetermined bowl game.
Kitna is being represented by Gainesville attorney Ron Kozlowski, according to the Orlando Sentinel.
In a statement, a Discord spokesperson said the service has a “zero-tolerance policy for child sexual abuse” and works “relentless to find and remove this abhorrent content and take action including banning the users responsible and engaging with the proper authorities.”
