Update: Jenny Hatch is organising a protest at the Manti Courthouse where the hearing will take place on March 22, 2023 at 1 p.m.  It will be in the West Courtroom.

2160 NORTH MAIN 

Manti, Utah

Be there.  Let them know we aren't tolerating this.  

David Lee Hamblin is currently in the Utah County Jail awaiting trial for raping two children thirty years ago.  He has previously been found to have molested two of his own daughters by clear and convincing evidence in a custody hearing.  Those daughters came forward in 2012 to accuse their father of raping them almost daily from within two weeks of birth into their teenage years, up until at least 2006.  The Provo Police Department taped Hamblin apologizing to one of his daughters for raping her, and he was arrested on 18 counts related to the rape and abuse of his daughters.  Despite a taped apology, the Utah County Attorneys Office failed to convict Hamblin and moved to dismiss the charges without prejudice in 2014.  

One of Hamblin's alleged accomplices, attorney David O. Leavitt, then became the Utah County Attorney, making an alleged child rapist the chief prosecutor in the county that charged David Hamblin with child rape in 2012-2014.   As the Utah County Attorney, David Leavitt disbanded the Special Victims Unit of sex crimes prosecutors, and proceeded to dismantle the Utah County Attorney's Office from within.  Prosecutions dropped, convictions dropped, and prison sentences decreased.  Leavitt tried to have Utah County Sheriff Mike Smith fired after Smith investigated the allegations against Hamblin in 2022, with that investigation ultimately resulting in Hamblin's most recent arrest.  David Leavitt lost his most recent bid for reelection, but due to the obvious conflict of interest, the most recent case against David Lee Hamblin is being prosecuted by Juab County Attorney Ryan Peters.   

Hamblin was initially denied bail in his current case after his arrest.  The court found that he was a danger to the community, because the allegations against him stretched back four decades and involved both minor and adult victims of sexual abuse.   Hamblin lost his license for sexually abusing his patients while he was a therapist.   He confessed the abuse to the Utah Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing.  

Incredibly enough, Judge Roger Griffin ruled in March 2023 that David Lee Hamblin should be released on bail in one of the two current cases against him.   Griffin did not dispute that the State had met the legal threshold in establishing that Hamblin should be denied bail at the onset of the current cases.  In fact, David Lee Hamblin did not dispute this.   Instead, Judge Griffin found that the thirty years between the alleged abuse in the current cases and the present day does not suffice to establish that David Lee Hamblin is a current threat to the community.  

This is despite the fact that David Hamblin allegedly administered peyote to children in recent years as part of his medicine man healing circles, which he established after losing his license to practice psychology for sexually abusing his patients.   Judge Griffin noted that one of the victims in the current cases against David Lee Hamblin had received threats, but he stated that the prosecution could not establish that David Lee Hamblin had anything to do with those threats.   No one else had the motive to threaten that particular victim, because no one besides David Lee Hamblin is sitting in the Utah County Jail at the moment.   

As a result of Judge Griffin's outrageous ruling, David Lee Hamblin as a hearing on March 22, 2023 for his motion to reconsider bail.  Judge Griffin has recommended that Hamblin be released on a mere $100,000 bail for one of the two current cases.  We must stop this miscarriage of justice and protect the community from David Lee Hamblin.   

You can read about the Hamblin case here.  

You can contact the prosecutor, Juab County Attorney Ryan Peters, at 435-623-3460.   If you want to attend the March 22, 2023 hearing remotely via Webex, you can do so via this link.  Stop child rapists in Utah. Sign the petition and get involved.   If you don't take a stand now, David Lee Hamblin and his accomplices will continue to rape and abuse children going forward, continuing at least four decades worth of abuse into the foreseeable future.  Enough is enough.  Hold the line.  This ends now.