Det. Preston Huddleston is a special man doing special work. It’s a job very few do or want. He is part of the Knox County Sheriff’s Office Family Crimes Unit. The folders on his desk are about cases of child sexual abuse, domestic violence, elder abuse and human trafficking.
Child sexual abuse tops his caseload. Domestic violence is next. What he knows and what he hears is not talked about at home. “It’s too depressing and awful to take home,” he says. “They don’t want to hear about child molestations and the other stuff.”
Det. Preston Huddleston
He deals with it during weekly meetings of the unit’s detectives. “It’s basically family time in our unit and we sit around one morning and talk about our cases. It’s a coping mechanism. It’s a very important time for me. It’s a decompression process for us.”
He’s an imposing figure who stands 6-5, soft spoken, thoroughly professional, a man destined to help what he calls “our most vulnerable citizens” – kids, domestic violence victims, the elderly and those with intellectual and development disabilities who get taken advantage of. “No one else is there to help them. If you can get justice for them, you’d be surprised how good you feel about that,” he says.
Three times he has been honored as KCSO’s Detective of the Month. Huddleston is also a member of the KCSO Negotiating Team dealing with the de-escalation of people threatening suicide or holding hostages.
Huddleston, 55, a native Knoxvillian, is a 1985 graduate of Central High School where he played football, basketball and track. He joined the U.S. Army prior to graduation and after graduating immediately reported to Fort Jackson, S.C., to begin what would be a 22-year career, including several years as a military policeman. He had deployments to Panama, Iraq and Kuwait. He retired in 2006 as a sergeant first class and came home. Today, he and wife Carolyn, who is vice president of operations for Autumn Care, and their three children and seven grandchildren enjoy their lives here.
Huddleston was lead detective in the recent high-profile case of Aaron Michael King, a 40-year-old West Knoxville man. On Nov. 5 he was sentenced to 77 years in prison for abusing a girl for 11 years. The abuse began when she was 5 and ended when she finally shared the abuse with her mother at age 16. King was convicted of five counts of rape of a child, five counts of rape, statutory rape by an authority figure, incest, two counts of aggravated sexual battery, especially aggravated sexual exploitation, tampering with evidence, especially aggravated kidnapping, and aggravated kidnapping.
Knox County District Attorney Charme Allen, whose office prosecuted King, shared more details in its news release about his conviction: “…. The abuse continued as the child grew up with King using sexual acts as punishment for things like bad grades. King would force the child to perform sexual acts in order to go out with friends. King also began filming sexual acts with the child. The repeated rapes and sexual abuse of the child continued until the child disclosed the decade of abuse to the mother.”
Huddleston said many cases are similar to this one. “This girl survived the abuse for a longer period of time. She blocked it out, just hoping it would stop,” he said. “They want to be regular children and she hated what was happening. She was scared to tell anyone it was going on and she didn’t want to destroy her family. Just like a lot of kids.”
He says solving child sex abuse cases is his No. 1 satisfaction, hands down. “A child can’t control anything. It just happens to them. Most of the time it’s incest – 25% of my cases are incest.
Mother, father, brother, sister, and uncles and aunts. It’s not what we call ‘stranger danger.’ It’s everyone. And it’s all over. It’s like everybody is doing it now, like it’s a fad. It crosses all barriers – social, racial, economic. Some kids don’t realize it’s wrong because it’s all they’ve ever experienced and they don’t know any better. They think everyone does it. We even have moms abusing sons. When you break the cycle and stop it you feel great.”
Huddleston paused … and added: “The one thing I don’t understand is how someone can do this to their own flesh and blood.”
He has a well-known knack and reputation for obtaining confessions from pedophiles and others. “You can’t come at them aggressively. It does not work. I tell them that I am not here to judge you, but tell me what and why it happened and did do you do this,” he explained. “I ask them if they need help, speak softly and listen. Many want to stop what they’re doing.”
He says he gets confessions in about 60% to 65% of his cases. “One of the attorneys in the DA’s office asked me what it is about me that makes a pedophile want to tell me what all they’ve done.” Another attorney says he’s so good “he could get a confession out of a cheeseburger.”
Tom King has served at newspapers in Georgia, Tennessee, Texas and California and was the editor of two newspapers. Suggest future stories at tking535@gmail.com or call him at 865-659-3562.
