A former Santa Clarita Valley man is now facing at least 15 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to sex trafficking minors two months after his release from state prison for a child sex crimes conviction.
Kai Whitney Sommers, a 38-year-old registered sex offender living in Ventura at the time of his latest arrest, entered his plea Thursday in a federal courtroom in Downtown Los Angeles, according to court records.
His plea references a September 2021 conviction that was reported to the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station and investigated by the department’s Special Victims Unit.
Sommers, then 33, and a Canyon Country resident, was arrested was arrested April 23, 2021, on suspicion of multiple counts of sexual assault as a result of the investigation by SVU detectives.
His prior arrest is mentioned in his federal plea agreement.
Detectives began that investigation in December 2020 regarding a report of a 14-year-old girl who was sexually assaulted at a home on Soledad Canyon Road.
The suspect began communicating with the victim in September 2020, initially in a teen chat room on the Internet, according to Sgt. Brian Hudson of the SVU. The two then used a messaging app on their cellphones to communicate.
Sommers enticed a minor on an online chat room to make money as an escort, lured the victim to meet with him, took her to his house and then sexually assaulted the victim, according to the DOJ news release.
Sommers was convicted and sentenced in September 2021 in Los Angeles County Superior Court for statutory rape and lewd or lascivious acts with a child 14 or 15 years and as an offender at least 10 years older than his victim.
In June 2023, he was released on post-release community supervision in Los Angeles County and later accepted for supervision in Ventura County. The supervision terms for Sommers include no access or possession of any digital devices that access the internet.
In August 2023, approximately two and half months after his release, Ventura County Probation Department officers conducted a search of Sommers’ home and found digital devices that contained child sexual abuse material, according to the Department of Justice’s statement and federal court records. The allegations note that the same month, he had been in contact with a minor on a messaging platform geared toward teens.
“During the review of Sommers’ devices, law enforcement identified a 16-year-old girl and a 14-year-old girl who met Sommers on the online platform,” according to a Department of Justice statement Thursday. “Sommers had requested he and the victims move the conversation to a secure application where he could entice and coerce the minors how to make extra money as escorts.”
Sommers enticed one victim to produce sexual abuse materials and enticed the other victim to provide fully clothed images for him that, unknown to both victims, he then posted in multiple commercial sex advertisements of each victim, according to a statement from federal prosecutors. Sommers also told the minors that if the clients asked how old they were, they had to say, “18.”
In a change-of-plea hearing and statement given Thursday, Sommers further admitted to possessing in August 2023 a phone that contained nearly 150 visual depictions of CSAM, as well as to distributing the material.
United States District Judge Josephine L. Staton scheduled a Sept. 24 sentencing hearing, at which time Sommers will face a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in federal prison and a statutory maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
