Utah woman, 27, who went topless in front of her stepchildren in her OWN home pleads guilty

A Utah woman has accepted a plea deal after being charged for being topless in front of her stepchildren in her own home.

Tilli Buchanan opted for the plea to avoid having the criminal case go to trial and having to register as a sex offender if convicted, her attorney told local media.

‘She would have loved to take it up on appeal,’ the attorney, Randy Richards, told the Salt Lake Tribune, describing the case as ‘ludicrous.’

‘But it was pretty much at my advice that she not – not because I don’t think she would win, but there’s a possibility that if we go all the way to trial, she’d be convicted by a jury and then she had to be on the sex offender registry.’

Buchanan had been charged with three misdemeanor counts of lewdness involving a child after her three stepkids aged nine to 13 saw her topless while she and her husband had been installing insulation in their garage.

The husband was also topless but he was not charged.

Tilli Buchanan, pictured left in court and right with her husband and stepchildren, took a plea deal Tuesday to avoid the risk of having to register as a sex offender if convicted

Tilli Buchanan’s decision brought an end to the case that drew attention to a debate over whether it’s fair to treat men and women differently for baring their chests. Her husband was not charged even though he also had his shirt off at the time

The couple had said they had stripped down to their underwear to avoid getting dirty.

Buchanan was charged in early 2019 after the children’s mother reported the incident to authorities.

She argued in court documents that if her husband could bare his chest, there was no reason she couldn’t.

But prosecutors disagreed and underlined that lewdness includes a woman’s breasts in contemporary American society.

In her plea on Tuesday, Buchanan admitted to exposing her breasts in front of an adult which ’caused affront or alarm.’ 

The charge will be dropped after a year as long as she does not commit another crime.

‘This whole thing is ridiculous,’ her attorney said. ‘She (or other women) have to worry about their kids seeing them topless? It’s ridiculous.’

The charges were filed after the children´s mother reported the incident to child welfare officials working on a separate investigation involving the children

Tilli Buchanan, her husband Jared and their three stepchildren in costume

Buchanan pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of lewdness as part of the agreement that dropped two other charges of lewdness involving a child. The remaining charge will be dropped after a year as long as Buchanan doesn’t commit any new crimes

He said his client had essentially pleaded guilty to being topless in front of her husband.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Utah, which was involved in the case, had said the charges against Buchanan amounted to prosecutorial overreach and should have never gone this far.

‘When I talk to people about the case I don’t think any of them realized they could be charged for a crime for walking around with their shirt off inside their own home,’ ACLU attorney Leah Farrell previously told The New York Times.