Patriot Front: White supremacist who ‘plotted Pride riot’ faces jail for child abuse images

A Patriot Front member, who was arrested for conspiring to disrupt an LGBTQ+ event, could face decades in jail after he pled guilty to possession of child sexual abuse images. 

Jared Michael Boyce pleaded guilty in April to nine felony counts of sexual exploitation of a minor and a misdemeanour of dealing in harmful material to a minor. 

He faces up to 30 years in prison for the charges and will be sentenced Tuesday (30 May) in Provo, Utah. 

The 28-year-old was one of 31 Patriot Front group members arrested for suspicion of conspiracy to riot at an Idaho LGBTQ+ Pride event in June 2022. 

The arrests were made after a tipster reported seeing a group of people loading up into a U-Haul truck like “a little army” at a hotel parking lot in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. 

Police, as a result of the arrests, seized Boyce’s phone. Authorities searched the phone and uncovered 22 images of child sexual abuse, KSLTV reported. 

Court documents stated some of the images involved “children from toddlers to prepubescents performing sexual acts” as well as others of minors “exposing their genitals”. 

During a police interview, Boyce admitted to possessing and accessing the images. 

He also admitted to having “sexually-themed conversations about children” in an online chatroom, sending images of child sexual abuse and sending a sexually explicit photo of his genitals to a 16-year-old girl. 

Boyce’s mother, Karen Amsden, told The Daily Beast last June that she gave her son an ultimatum to “choose between Patriot Front and your family”. Boyce responded that he “can’t quit Patriot Front” so she kicked him out of the house. 

Boyce still faces a misdemeanour count of criminal conspiracy to riot concerning the Idaho Pride event.

Patriot Front is a white supremacist group in the US that “justifies its ideology of hate and intolerance under the guise of preserving the ethnic and cultural origins of its members’ European ancestors”, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) stated. 

It is “responsible for the vast majority of white supremacist propaganda distributed in the United States” since 2019, according to the ADL. Thomas Rousseau, who founded the neo-Nazi group, was also arrested in the Idaho incident.

Patriot Front has been among the far-right and extremist groups leading anti-LGBTQ+, anti-drag campaigns across the country. 

In March, Patriot Front joined other far-right groups and neo-Nazis in an Ohio park to disrupt a drag queen story event.

Footage from the incident showed masked people waving swastika flags, throwing Nazi salutes and shouting “sieg heil” and “heil Hitler”.

Readers who are affected by the issues raised in this story are encouraged to contact the NSPCC on 0808 800 5000 (www.nspcc.org.uk). Readers in the US are encouraged to contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline on (1-800-422-4453) or the American SPCC (www.americanspcc.org).