Seth Ackerman Jackson

Introduction

Seth Ackerman Jackson, a 45-year-old Billings man, was sentenced to 100 years in prison on November 13, 2026 for multiple counts of child rape, in a Yellowstone County District Court hearing where at least four of his survivors — young men he had groomed and molested as boys — sat in the gallery and testified about years of trauma . Judge Donald L. Harris ordered Jackson to serve 100 years for each of the three counts of sexual intercourse without consent, making him ineligible for parole until his 70s and, by the court’s own acknowledgment, unlikely to ever leave prison . Prosecutors and survivors described a man who adopted an avuncular persona — gifts, video games, help with rent — to buy the silence of the underage boys he abused .

Background Information

The investigation began in March 2025, when a Billings teenager disclosed to his parents that Jackson, a friend of the family, had molested him; that disclosure ignited a Billings Police Department investigation that ultimately revealed at least three more adolescent boys among Jackson’s victims . The boy told Detective Annalisa Jones that he had met Jackson in 2024, that Jackson invited him into his home within a week and groped and raped him there at age 13, and that the abuse continued for another eight to nine months; when Jackson attempted to molest him again during a March 2025 visit, the boy shoved him away, left, and told his parents .

A search warrant on Jackson’s home confirmed the layout matched the boy’s description and turned up a file tote with four folders, each containing photos and school papers belonging to four different children; Jones identified three more survivors through that evidence . One of those survivors had disclosed in October 2024 to a Billings high school counselor that he had been sexually abused when he was younger, and in interviews with Jones described Jackson engaging in sex acts with him and a third survivor, a teenage boy roughly the same age; Jones interviewed that third survivor and a fourth .

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Convicted and sentenced to 100 years in prison.

All four boys, Jones testified at sentencing, reported the same pattern: amid the sexual abuse, Jackson gave them gifts, paid for video games, and endeared himself to the children he was molesting. Though unrelated to any of them, several initially described Jackson as their uncle to police; to their families he was outwardly helpful — in one instance helping a couple pay their rent while, at the same time, molesting their son . “Seth was like a tick, feeding off everybody,” one survivor testified; another told the court, “I don’t know how somebody could do this to children… I know he knew it was wrong” .

Yellowstone County prosecutors filed criminal charges against Jackson in April 2025; by the time the investigation concluded he faced eight felonies — four counts of rape, two counts of sexual assault, prostitution of a child, and child sex abuse . Detectives were unable to find him for questioning; he was ultimately apprehended in Fresno, California, on a $500,000 arrest warrant, and entered the Yellowstone County Detention Facility in May 2025, remaining there until sentencing . On September 10, 2026, Jackson pleaded guilty to the charges, with prosecutors agreeing to drop five of the eight felonies in exchange . A licensed clinical social worker who evaluated him before sentencing, Michael Sullivan, testified that Jackson has significant pedophilic and hebephilic interests, with no criminal history and no signs of severe depression or trauma .

Public Reaction and Consequences

Nearly three hours of testimony from survivors and their relatives preceded the sentence. The father of the boy who first reported Jackson took the stand and called him intelligent, manipulative, and “a predator,” saying that through his years of traumatizing underage boys Jackson was also teaching them how to become predators . Interim Yellowstone County Attorney Arielle Dean, who prosecuted the case, argued for a 100-year sentence with a 30-year restriction on parole eligibility and applauded the young men who cooperated: “I am so proud of these young men. They have defied the odds. They have been so brave” . She also said, “He was so good at getting away with sexually abusing children, that it makes one wonder how many victims this man actually has… We’ll never know,” citing research on how rarely male and child victims disclose abuse .

Current Status

Jackson, 45, is serving 100 years in prison for each of the three sexual-intercourse-without-consent counts, sentenced by Judge Donald L. Harris after the September guilty pleas . Defense attorney Joel Thompson had argued for a nearly identical sentence with a 25-year parole restriction rather than the state’s 30 . Given the opportunity to speak, Jackson apologized to the boys and young men he abused; Harris told him, “I’m pretty much convinced that this is not the first time that you’ve molested young children, but it’s my job to make sure, in part, that it’s the last time you do that” .

Impact on Their Career/Life

Jackson held no public role — the record documents him as a family friend and neighbor whose abuse was enabled by trust rather than by any position. His victims’ accounts describe the lasting cost: the first boy to report him is now an 18-year-old high school graduate with ambitions of becoming a car mechanic, who told the court that Jackson “took a part of him away” . For Jackson, the case ends with a sentence he will almost certainly die serving, and with a court finding — in the judge’s own words — that the harm he caused the young men in that courtroom was “beyond dispute, permanent and debilitating” .

Sources

• “Billings man sentenced to 100 years for grooming and molesting underage boys” — Billings Gazette, November 2026: source