A 19-year-old Twin Lakes man is facing 12 felony charges after Kenosha County investigators say a tip submitted through a statewide school reporting system led them to Snapchat records showing sexually explicit communications with a 13-year-old and explicit images of a 16-year-old. Austin Scaletta was arrested on August 20 following an investigation that stretched across Wisconsin and Illinois law enforcement agencies.
The Kenosha County Sheriff's Office referred nine counts of possession of child pornography, two counts of exposing a child to harmful material, and one count of sexual misconduct by school staff or volunteer to the Kenosha County District Attorney's Office on August 27, according to the FOX6 News Milwaukee report. The charges have been referred but not yet formally filed in circuit court, and Scaletta is presumed innocent unless proven guilty. Investigators say Snapchat records obtained through a search warrant uncovered the explicit exchanges with the 13-year-old, a case in which Scaletta admitted during an August 20 interview to asking the child to engage in sexual acts, as well as nine explicit images or videos of the 16-year-old saved within separate conversations.
A Tip Through a Statewide Youth Reporting System
The investigation began after the Kenosha County Sheriff's Office received a tip through Speak Up, Speak Out, Wisconsin's statewide reporting program for K-12 students, which the sheriff's office says prompted its inquiry starting on July 24. The program is designed to help young people report concerns about themselves or others who may be hurting, struggling, or in danger, and it operates 24/7 across the state, accepting confidential and sometimes anonymous reports that are routed to local law enforcement when criminal activity is involved.
Students can reach Speak Up, Speak Out through an app on iPhone or Android, by texting SUSO to 738477, or by calling a dedicated phone line, and the same tips are also forwarded to the school affected. Trish Kilpin, executive director of the Office of School Safety at the Wisconsin Department of Justice, said the program gives young people another avenue for reporting alongside parents and trusted adults, and that most tips come in during the school day even though local police also receive reports when school is not in session. Kilpin has said real-time responsiveness helps build youth trust in the system, and the program has received more than 24,000 tips since its 2020 launch.
No Misconduct Found at Wilmot High School
Scaletta had volunteered at Wilmot High School through a Wisconsin National Guard program, but the Kenosha County Sheriff's Office says it found no connection between the alleged offenses and the school, its students, or its operations. Wilmot's district administrator has said schools send information about the Speak Up, Speak Out program to families through a newsletter and remind students about it every year.
Wilmot High School administration emailed district parents on August 27 to inform them of the law enforcement investigation into the referred charges against Scaletta, according to the Kenosha County Sheriff's Office. The investigation also identified separate incidents that were referred to outside jurisdictions, reflecting the multi-state coordination between Wisconsin and Illinois agencies that shaped the case's timeline.
What Wisconsin Law Allows for These Charges
Under Wisconsin Statute § 948.12(1m), possession of child pornography by an adult is a Class D felony, and each saved image or video can be charged as a separate count, carrying up to 25 years in prison per count — 15 years of initial confinement and 10 years of extended supervision, according to Chirafisi Anderson, S.C. Separately, Wisconsin Statute § 948.098 classifies sexual misconduct by a school staff member or volunteer against a student as a Class I felony, covering intentional verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature, and the law applies to volunteers regardless of whether the conduct occurred on school property.
The case underscores how Wisconsin's tipline infrastructure has expanded in recent years. The Wisconsin Department of Justice's Office of School Safety reported that Speak Up, Speak Out received 6,946 tips during the 2024-2025 school year, a 30 percent jump over the prior year, pushing the program past 17,000 total tips since it launched in 2020, according to Urban Milwaukee. Bullying has remained the single most frequently reported concern to the tipline in every annual report since 2020, per the same outlet.
The reliance on confidential tiplines mirrors a broader national shift in school safety practices. More than half of public middle and high schools nationwide now operate similar confidential reporting systems, a trend the Hamilton School District has tied to U.S. Secret Service research finding that someone other than the attacker had prior knowledge in 81 percent of violent school incidents. The referred charges against Scaletta now move to the Kenosha County District Attorney's Office, where formal charging decisions are the next step in the case.
