Sex offender found with missing girl after fleeing halfway house sentenced to 4 years

Last year, Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Jennifer Branch sentenced Jaret Wright to three years of probation but ordered him to first complete sex offender treatment at what she and others believed was a fully secure facility.

It wasn’t. In October, Wright – who had been convicted on sex charges after living for three weeks in a College Hill girl’s bedroom – walked out of a halfway house in Warren County. He was on the run for seven months before being found in Virginia with a missing 16-year-old girl from Pennsylvania.

On Wednesday, Wright was again in Branch’s courtroom, this time to be sentenced for violating his probation.

Branch told the 22-year-old that he needed to be “locked away from society.” She sentenced Wright to four years in prison, the maximum she could impose.

“You have shown that you do not want to be rehabilitated, you do not want treatment,” she told Wright. “I see no signs from you of any remorse – let alone genuine remorse.”

Wright’s case dates back to early 2021, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Wright, who is from the Akron area, took a bus to Cincinnati in February 2021, intending to meet up with the 15-year-old College Hill girl. They had met on Snapchat, according to testimony at his trial. He ended up living in the girl’s basement bedroom for three weeks, without her mother or siblings knowing.

The arrangement fell apart after Wright had a mental breakdown, according to testimony. He stood trial last year on charges including rape, but ultimately pleaded guilty to lower-level crimes of gross sexual imposition and a child pornography charge.

Girl's mother says Wright taunted her

In January, three months after leaving the halfway house and as U.S. Marshals were searching for him, Wright contacted the College Hill girl’s mother. She spoke in court Wednesday and described the communication as: “Ha, ha, he was free, and they weren’t going to catch him.”

Wright also was contacting juvenile girls through social media apps, his probation officer, Doug Jones, told Branch.

Wright didn’t make a statement in court Wednesday. His attorney, James Moore, said Wright doesn’t deny leaving Talbert House − Turtle Creek Center in October, about one month after being placed there.

Moore said another resident was threatening to sexually assault and kill Wright. That resident, Moore said, burned Wright’s arm with a cigarette.

Moore also said Wright wasn’t being given medication to treat his multiple mental health issues, including bipolar disorder, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. He said Wright had been given medication when he was held at the Hamilton County jail.

“He did not leave simply because he wanted to thumb his nose at the court,” Moore told Branch.

Prosecutors noted that Wright did not turn himself in. Instead, he had to be extradited from Virginia, where authorities found him in May with the missing girl from Pennsylvania.

Assistant Prosecutor Ernest Lee said Wright “coerced (the 16-year-old girl) into running away.”

'Nothing has changed'

A pattern has emerged with Wright – all involving teenage girls. Family members have told The Enquirer about two girls in the Akron area. One ran away with him briefly. His relationship with another led her family to get a restraining order against him.

There was also a 15-year-old girl in Florida. Her parents got a restraining order against Wright, according to his biological mother.

In early 2021, Wright, then 20, was arrested in the Akron area, hiding in the basement of a relative’s home. According to a family member, Wright was seeking to have a sexual relationship with a teenage cousin.

The situation with the missing Pennsylvania girl “shows his mindset,” Lee told Branch. “Nothing has changed since you sentenced him last year.”

Wright received credit for the year and a half he already spent in jail, much of that time awaiting trial.