AMERICAN FORK – Former youth symphony leader Brent E. Taylor pleaded guilty Tuesday to attempted forcible sodomy, a first-degree felony, and admitted that he engaged in sexual acts with a teenage boy about 20 years ago.
The statement came shortly after he was arrested at what was scheduled to be the start of his own jury trial, which the court planned to hold with or without him.
It has been nearly six years since the initial charges were filed against him, and after months of delays, many of which were due to his health and failure to appear in court when ordered.
Charges were filed in two separate criminal cases against Taylor following a Deseret News investigation that reported that three former Utah Valley Youth Symphony employees accused Taylor of sexually abusing or touching them inappropriately when they were teenagers. Taylor was the symphony’s executive director and retired in 2017 after 44 years with the group.
He is accused of engaging in sexual conduct with a teenage musician between 2002 and 2006 in Utah County, the one associated with this statement, and of abusing a former employee and another child in Sandy in the mid-1980s, beginning when the children were 12 years old. and 13 years old. Three others filed accusations of abuse and lewdness against him.
Taylor’s criminal charges in Salt Lake County: two counts of sodomy against a child, a first-degree felony; and two counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child, a second-degree felony, are still pending.
Taylor, 76, pleaded guilty Tuesday under a plea deal that changed his charge from forcible sodomy to attempted forcible sodomy. He admitted to attempting to engage in sexual acts with someone over the age of 14 in 2004 or 2005.
His case was scheduled for a jury trial this week. Attorneys had begun selecting jurors and had made arrangements to give instructions to jurors if Taylor was not at trial, as well as arrangements for what she would be allowed to wear if she attended.
The judge ruled in May that the trial would continue with or without Taylor after both his attorneys and prosecutors said they had made efforts to locate him but were unable to.
After failing to appear for hearings until Thursday, Taylor’s warrant was withdrawn Tuesday with a note that he had been arrested and booked into the Utah County Jail. He is scheduled to be sentenced on August 28.
In the fall of 2023, Taylor repeatedly missed virtual court hearings. His attorney said he was unable to attend the virtual hearings alone after the death of his nurse.
Earlier, Fourth District Judge Roger Griffin determined after reviewing medical reports that Taylor was exaggerating her poor health to delay her case and ordered her to surrender to jail. At the time, Taylor was living in Colorado, but was living in Provo when the charges were filed in 2018.
At the last hearing in that case in February, his attorney said he was in a Colorado hospital and there was still an active warrant against him.
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