Internet Predator News Stories Archive - Chat nightmares that have made it to the news headlines in the past.

Internet predator groomed and abused girl - An internet predator who befriended a youngster online and then lured her to Weston-super-Mare and sexually abused her has been handed an indeterminate sentence for public protection.
Pub worker Richard Butlin, 47, established contact with the 14-year-old girl via an internet chatroom in which he posed as a boy called Stu.
The court heard that, following a family row, the girl texted Butlin to pick her up and she left her home in her school uniform, saying she was going to school and then seeing a friend.
Brendon Moorhouse, defending, said that the girl had said to police she would have told Butlin to stop his activities if she thought he was "doing something wrong".
She also indicated her friends were sexually active, and she wanted to be like them. Read More>>

Valley MySpace Teen Sexually Assaulted - Fresno County Sheriff’s arrested a 20-year-old Fresno man, accused of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl from Kettleman City.
Sheriff’s Deputies say the teen ran away to meet Luis Bernabe, who she met on the social networking website, MySpace.
Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims said, “A 13-year-old girl was sexually assaulted and I can only see it getting worse unless we take some positive steps with law enforcement in partnership with our parents.”
Sheriff Mims is advising parents to learn more about online predators and how to protect children. Read More>>

Windsor man gets 4 years for Internet luring of girl, 14 - A man from Windsor, Ont., has been sentenced to four years in prison for convincing a 14-year-old girl to leave her family's Saskatchewan home in the middle of the night to live with him.
Daniel Nickolson, 43, pleaded guilty in a Windsor court to child abduction and internet luring.
Nickolson met the girl, who was 14 at the time, on the internet. The girl climbed out a window of the family home near Swift Current, Sask., in the middle of the night in March 2008, leaving behind a note that said she had run away with her internet boyfriend. Read More>>

Erie teen's life resumes after disappearance - Lillie, 14, had walked to a Wal-Mart, where she met up with Donald Cates, her friend from Internet chat rooms. She called him Max.
She had left with him not at all sure where they were going, and knowing there would be trouble later, when her mother would find the notebook she'd left open on her bedroom floor. Inside was a rough draft of a runaway letter. They had planned this.
"Once we knew who she was with, we were worried," Michelle Lillie said. "You start thinking, What if? What if? What if?"
There was reason to worry. Cates was 21. He was facing a second trial in his home state of Montana, where police said he had forced five underage girls to have sex with him. Read More>>

Internet pedophile Lee Donaldson begins jail term - He posed as a lad of 14. But in reality, Lee Donaldson was a 36-year-old cyber pervert who persuaded schoolgirls to act out his sexual fantasies.
Donaldson trawled internet chat-rooms to find vulnerable girls to groom in a 10-month campaign.
He made contact with six different girls from his computer at home in Washington.
It was revealed he had been accessing chat-rooms to contact girls under the pretence he was a schoolboy. Officers also found out he was downloading, storing and passing on child pornography. Read More>>

Paedophile ‘groomed’ boy on internet - A PAEDOPHILE who tried to lure a schoolboy to a secret meeting for sex was yesterday jailed for three years by a judge who told him: “I wish it could be indefinite.”
Rhodes, 26, befriended the boy, exchanged sexually explicit messages, sent him photographs of his penis and arranged to meet him at a cinema complex in Middlesbrough. Rhodes groomed the 13- year-old boy for days before arranging to meet him at a cinema complex for sex.
Teesside Crown Court heard that the boy, who has learning difficulties and suffers from health problems, had second thoughts about the plan and did not meet Rhodes. Read More>>

Online 'friend' takes 13-year-old to Twin Cities - Authorities are seeking a felony charge against a registered sex offender from Minnesota who is accused of taking a 13-year-old La Crosse girl from her home after developing a relationship with her online.
The girl was reported missing Friday and is believed to have left willingly with the 32-year-old man from Burnsville, Minnesota.
Her family and investigators used information from Internet social networking accounts to find the girl. Read More>>

Predator pleads guilty to child-sex charges - South Shore resident Sylvain Dufresne, 35, pleaded guilty yesterday to separate charges of sexual touching and invitation to sexual touching involving a 12-year-old Delson boy he initially encountered on an Internet chat site.
In the most recent incident, Hélène Poussard, Dufresne's lawyer, told the judge, the 12-year-old met Dufresne on a website that was supposed to be restricted to adults.
Gagnon said Dufresne obtained the boy's telephone number, then met the boy at home while his parents were out. Read More>>

Girl faces child porn charges for nude photos - A 14-year-old girl in New Jersey is facing child pornography charges after she posted nearly 30 explicit nude pictures of herself on MySpace.com, police said Thursday.
The case comes as prosecutors nationwide pursue child pornography cases resulting from kids sexting nude photos to one another over cell phones and e-mail.
"We consider this case a wake-up call to parents," said Passaic County sheriff's spokesman Bill Maer. The girl posted the photos because "she wanted her boyfriend to see them." Read More>>

Cumbrian dad, 48, 'groomed teen for sex' - A middle-aged Cumbrian man travelled 200 miles to Leicester so he could spend the night with a 15-year-old girl he had met in an internet chatroom.
The man, 48, who has two children of his own, sent the girl “flirtatious” emails and text messages after meeting her on a dating website.
Although he knew how old she was, he gave her a “friendship” ring and arranged to meet her in Leicester, where he had booked a family room in a hotel.
The girl said that while chatting on the internet and in text messages the girl told the man “about school stuff” and about her hobbies. He, in return, told her about his two children and his hobbies.
On the day the girl met the man at Leicester train station she told her parents she would be staying with a friend for the night. Read More>>

Connecticut man faces 15 years in state prison for paying teen for sex - A Connecticut man who met a 14-year-old Lehigh Valley girl in an Internet chat room and paid her for sex spoke today.
The man met the victim in a Yahoo.com chat room called Girls Who Need Money under the username "mycash2you" in 2005. He told the girl his name was Allan and gave her his phone number, police said.
The two later talked on the phone and agreed to meet at Bethlehem Area Public Library on April 27, 2006, police said. He offered the girl $120 an hour for sex and she accepted. Read More>>

Pimps Go Online to Lure Kids Into Prostitution - She was a 16-year-old California girl looking for trouble on MySpace; he was a 22-year-old self-described pimp who liked the revealing photos she posted to her profile. Three weeks after they met on the social networking site, they were arrested together in real life outside a cheap motel in Sacramento, 50 miles from her home.
Last June, a 14-year-old Ohio girl ran away with a 30-year-old Florida pimp named Alan Townsend, after meeting him on the social networking site Urbanchat.com.
"This happens, and it happens a lot more than people realize," says Parry Aftab, founder and director of WiredSafety, which advises children on internet risks. "We don't want to terrify parents. But if their kids are at risk, they're at more risk online." Read More>>

Cell phone 'predator' gets three years in prison - Costa Mesa man, 56, at first claimed he was 16 when he met a 14-year-old girl in an Internet chat room, prosecution says.
A self-employed computer consultant was sentenced to three years in prison Friday for using a 14-year-old girl he met in an Internet chat room for sexual purposes by enticing her to take nude photos of herself with a cell phone.
The girl's mother told Kelly before sentencing that Riddle "took my daughter's innocent view of the world. …He took away her trust of people." Read More>>

Jury: Man guilty of child sex crime - A 34-year-old Beaver Dam man accused of using the Internet to lure a teenage girl for sex has been found guilty.
The felony charges stem from a Dec. 28, 2007, incident involving a 14-year-old Waupun girl.
The Waupun teen told investigators she met Campbell through a chat room on the Internet and invited him to come to her Waupun home to watch TV in her bedroom while her mother was at work, according to the criminal complaint.
While Campbell was in the residence, the girl told police that he grabbed her in a sexual manner. The victim also testified that Campbell masturbated in front of her and touched her breast, according to the complaint. Read More>>

Half Hollow Hills West teacher charged in sex with boy - A Half Hollow Hills West teacher was arrested Friday and charged with having sex with a 15-year-old boy, police said.
"The two met on an Internet chat room," Auspaker said. "It was a chat room on a men's Web site; a gay Web site."
Berman picked the teen up from his home Jan. 31 and took him to Berman's home at 90-14 Fairfield Way, where they had sex, police said. Berman is single and lives alone. Read More>>

Online predators using phones, Teen victim warns of dangers lurking in tiny keypad - Kyra, now 13, used her phone to look for some music and ended up on mocospace.com, a networking site. A 20-year-old man texted her and said he was getting off work soon. She texted him back and agreed to meet him because, as she says, "I have trouble saying 'no.'"
The man came to pick her up, then sexually assaulted her.
Increasingly, online predators are using phones, and other handheld devices to seek out and groom potential underage victims, said Mike Harris, who supervises the Child Sex Offender Internet Investigations Unit run out of the Jefferson County district attorney's office. Read More>>

Man performs sex acts with young girl he met on internet - A 31-year-old man indecently assaulted a girl of 12 after striking up an internet chat with her and arranging to meet her on a date.
The man was handed down a suspended jail term after admitting to defiling the girl and participating in sexual acts with her.
The internet chatting took place in December and before. Read More>>

Charges laid after online luring attempts - Two men have been charged with luring underage Calgary children over the Internet, including an American who flew here to meet a 15-year-old girl, renewing calls for parents to monitor home computers carefully.
In the first case, a Calgary man is charged with the luring and sexual assault of a 13-year-old boy, allegedly within 10 days of chatting online.
In a separate case, an American is charged with luring after flying to Calgary with the alleged intention of meeting a 15-year-old girl he knew from online.
The two cases must serve as a reminder of the dangers of the Internet, and the responsibilities of parents to monitor home computer use.
"I think all parents should be aware of what their children are doing, who they're talking with," said Andrus, of the Southern Alberta Integrated Child Exploitation team. "You have to make it a priority to know these things." Read More>>

Police: Florida man used Internet to entice Idaho girl - Police say a Florida man used the Internet to entice a 15-year-old Idaho girl and encourage her to drug her mother so the two could continue their chats uninterrupted.
Moscow Police Department officials say the man, 52, of Melbourne, Fla., met the girl on an Orlando Bloom Web site when she was 12- or 13-years old. The two met by blogging on the site, then exchanged personal e-mails and continued to communicate informally. The relationship escalated in January 2008, officials said.
"He represented himself as a 21-year-old police officer in training in Florida," Moscow Police Department Assistant Chief David Duke told the Idaho Press-Tribune. The girl originally indicated she was older Read More>>

Novi man pleads guilty to enticing teen for sex - A 24-year-old Novi man has admitted bringing a 13-year-old Oklahoma girl he met online to Michigan for sex.
According to prosecutors, Villanueva used Internet chats and cell phones to contact the girl in 2007. In March 2008, he went to Sand Springs, Okla., to bring her back to his Novi apartment for sex.
"She was yet another victim of an online enticement and her victimization would have continued for much longer," acting U.S. Attorney Terrence Berg said Tuesday in a news release. Read More>>

Newcastle girl lured on Internet - A 31-year-old man from New Hamburg has been charged with child luring after a man met a 15-year-old girl in an Internet chat room and invited her to his home to have sex.
The man was charged in Durham Region, where the girl and her family live.
Police said the teen, who is now 16, met the man in a chat room last May, and they chatted for several months before the conversations turned sexual.
The pair arranged to meet in a store parking lot in Newcastle on Jan. 3, and the man picked her up and drove her to his home. Read More>>

Prints in snow lead mom to girl and predator - Her 13-year-old daughter's footprints led a North York mother to the car hiding the girl and an alleged child-luring pervert early yesterday. When she looked inside the vehicle, the mother saw her daughter being sexually assaulted, police said.
Police said the 13-year-old and a man met on an MSN chatline the night before and agreed to meet at a location near the girl's home.
Const. Curtis Quesnelle called the incident a "cautionary tale" for all families.
"That's why we put out that press release to alert the public on how these things can happen so quickly, especially for the parents to keep an eye on their children and what they are doing on the Internet," Quesnelle said.
Quesnelle said the girl told the mom she was going to shovel the driveway. Read More>>

Disclaimer: These news stories are published here in the News Archives because the News sites that they were originally published the articles seem to take the stories offline after a few weeks. Credit is given to the original publishing site when possible but we feel that the stories should be kept online for awhile longer to try to let parents know that the dangers lurking on the Internet are real and happen almost daily. If the owners of the sites or stories do not want them posted here, notify me and they will be removed immediately.