Local 19-year-old pleads guilty to child sex abuse charges

In addition, he will be required to register as a sex offender, and is ordered to have no future contact with minors, with the exception of four named family members. 

“What you did was very controlling and very manipulative and you traumatized 12 people,” said Judge Karen Ostrye, who delivered Vaday’s sentence.

According to Assistant District Attorney Carrie Rasmussen, who was prosecuting Vaday’s case on behalf of the state, Vaday had been obtaining nude photos of a victim — typically a child between the ages of 13 and 17 — and then threatening to release the photo online if the victim didn’t get someone else to send him a photo.

In total, there were 12 named victims in the case, and additional unnamed victims who chose not to press charges.

“I called all 12 named victims yesterday and I don’t believe anyone wanted to come today,” Rasmussen said at Vaday’s sentencing hearing on Sept. 18. “That’s not a surprise to me, because I think it was traumatizing just to get a phone call from me.”

One of the victims, now an adult, did ask Rasmussen to read her name and story at the sentencing hearing. While Rasmussen declined to release the name, she did give a statement about the victim’s experience: “You pretty much ruined her senior year. You traumatized her life so much that she moved away … you ruined this community for her.”

While Vaday was a minor himself when the incidents first began, he was only charged on crimes committed after his 18th birthday, and he was arrested as an adult on Aug. 7, 2018, as part of a joint investigation between Hood River City Police and the Hood River County Sheriff’s Office that began in September 2017.

“It took a while to develop what was going on,” said Hood River County Sheriff Matt English shortly after Vaday’s initial arrest.

Vaday was initially lodged at NORCOR following his arrest and was issued a conditional release on Aug. 21, 2018; but he was booked into NORCOR again on July 16, 2019, for violation of his release agreement and charged with an additional felony: Identity theft. According to court records, Vaday had purchased a pre-paid phone under a false name several days earlier — violating conditions of his release that stated he was to have no internet or smartphone access of any kind.

Vaday’s attorney, Conor Sullivan, said that Vaday is paying a “hefty price” early on in his life, and said, “He’s going to get through this and he’s going to take his probation seriously.”

The first row of the public seating in the courtroom was filled by members of Vaday’s family; Sullivan requested that the provision requiring Vaday to have no future contact with minors be amended to exempt four named members of Vaday’s family. Ostrye granted the request, and encouraged Vaday to use his family as a support system as he continues with the rest of his life.

“This needs to be your last appearance in the justice system,” Ostrye said to Vaday, informing him that because Oregon’s sentencing guidelines are on a grid system, and because Vaday now has more than three felonies on his record, any future felony or misdemeanor will be automatically sentenced as a class “A” crime, which carries more severe sentences. “You do have some permanent consequences here but this does not have to define the rest of your life … you have too much to risk, and I don’t want to scare you, but you will not do well in prison. You don’t want to go there.”

Vaday is currently lodged at NORCOR and is scheduled to be released on Nov. 8, 2019.