commentary by Patrick H. Moore
Here and there I’ve pointed out that many criminals were physically and/or sexually abused as a child. It’s easy to say: “Well, they should have gotten help,” but the fact is that even with psycho-therapeutic help later in life, the sexual abuse victim may not be able to recover and may ultimately turn to crime himself (or herself). In my experience in our legal practice, the crimes usually are limited to drug trafficking and occasionally, sex crimes. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, however, as the case of Utah police officer Joshua Boren clearly demonstrates.
In January of this year, after returning home from a Christmas trip to Disney World, Joshua Boren killed his wife Kelly Boren, 32, his mother-in-law Marie King, 55, his son Jaden, 7, and his daughter Haley, 5, at their home in Utah. He then committed suicide.
The five bodies were discovered in bedrooms in the family home in Spanish Fork, a city of about 37,000 located 50 miles south of Salt Lake City, after Boren, 34, failed to turn up for a night shift.
New information has now been released, not about the “nuts-and-bolts” of the actual shootings, but rather regarding Boren’s motivations which clearly seem to stem from his abusive childhood. The AP reports that just hours before Boren 
became unhinged and destroyed the entire family, he had received text messages from his wife Kelly in which she threatened to leave him and take their kids. The Deseret News reported that in the text messages, Kelly Boren also confronted her husband about having raped her and told him their marriage was over (http://bit.ly/1oC8lWG ). At that juncture, the couple already had been separated for some time.
Joshua Boren’s therapist, who apparently remains unnamed, informed the authorities that Boren had drugged his wife and videotaped himself sexually assaulting her on more than one occasion.
I will never fully understand why sex criminals seem to be obsessed not only with committing their horrible offenses, but seem equally obsessed with videotaping the acts. I realize that having the permanent record close at hand allows them to resort to the tapes in order to “get off” whenever they feel like it, but the risk of the tapes being discovered either by law enforcement or significant others is huge.
In this case, Kelly Boren discovering the tapes in 2013 undoubtedly sped up the dissolution of their marriage and ultimately led to her decision to take the kids which, tragically, was instrumental in their deaths. According to Spanish Fork Police Lt. Matt Johnson, when Kelly Boren learned she had been drugged and raped on several occasions, she confided in a few friends, but she did not report the assaults to police because she didn’t want to ruin her husband’s law enforcement career.
The night before she was killed, Kelly Boren brought up the alleged sexual assault again, texting the word “rape” to her husband four times, the documents show. “I hate my life because (of) you,” she texted. “You killed a part of me.”
She wrote in another text: “I don’t want to live in fear and hate and anger.”
The next morning, Kelly Boren told her husband she would take the kids, prompting Joshua Boren to reply by text: “Don’t involve the kids, they are innocent.”
The police report reveals that Joshua Boren was sexually abused as a child, struggled with drug addiction as a young man, and after becoming addicted to pornography, struggled with this addiction throughout his life. To make matters worse, he harbored a deep-rooted hatred for his mother because after his father committed suicide when Joshua was 5, his mother began using drugs and took up with several men, one of whom reportedly sexually abused him. Joshua’s sister told the police that Joshua blamed his mother for not protecting him.
The unidentified therapist told police Boren was like a “3-year-old boy stuck in a big man’s body.”
The police report states: “Josh was a very troubled individual that felt like he was about to lose his wife and children.”
Boren worked as as a Utah County sheriff’s deputy for seven years before moving to the Lindon Police Department where he had been on the force for only three months when the murder-suicide occurred.
He used the service firearm to kill his family and the toxicology reports show that he was stone cold sober when he went berserk.
There is some evidence that Boren was “close” to the children he murdered. Although he had been separated from his wife for some time, friends and family report that he still came over every morning to get the kids ready for school and preschool. He also picked them up every afternoon and according to Lt. Johnson, “he was praised as being an excellent father.”
Predictably, Boren’s savage attack on his “loved ones” stunned the community, as well as friends and family. Lt. Johnson stated that investigators didn’t find anybody who suspected he would be capable of such an act.
* * * * *
I’m struck by several things. First, I don’t really buy the claim that nobody ever suspected that Boren would be capable of acts of going off the rails. Someone this troubled most likely have given off tell-tale signs. And his therapist, who I’m also mildly suspicious of for reasons I don’t understand, stated that Boren was like a “3-year-old boy stuck in a big man’s body.” (I hope that Dr. Starks will check in on this issue; shouldn’t the therapist of a “walking time bomb” and sex criminal know that something is seriously amiss.
Second, in their police report, law enforcement seems to treat Boren with considerable gentleness considering the truly heinous nature of his actions. Although I could be wrong, if he had been a civilian, I don’t think we would be witnessing the same solicitude.
Third, what is deeply troubling is the fact that volatile situations like this often seem to be catapulted beyond the point of no return over the custody of the children issue. The whole family might still be alive if Kelly Boren had not stated in no uncertain terms that she was taking the kids. This is not to say she didn’t have every right to take the kids based on the sexual assaults; it’s just unfortunate that she didn’t proceed more slowly and carefully. Based 
on Boren’s reportedly positive daily interactions with the kids, he does not appear to have posed any immediate threat to them; in fact, it could be argued that the seemingly loving care he extended toward them could have been his attempt to be the good father he never had. This is a complex issue, however, with no easy answers.
What Kelly Boren should have done, I suppose, is gone to the police and turned over the “rape tapes” which, at least in theory, would (should) have quickly led to Boren’s arrest.