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

Internet Sex Case Brings 12-year Prison Sentence - In an emotionally charged hearing, an Austin, Texas, man who traveled to West Bend several times to have sex with a 15-year-old girl he met on the Internet, was sentenced Friday to 12 years in prison as the victim and the man's three children looked on.
According to a criminal complaint, Geyer and the girl met in an online chat room in February 2007, after which Geyer came to West Bend several times over the next three months, often meeting her at the West Bend Public Library and then going to a motel.
“You, sir, are every parent's worst nightmare,” Judge Patrick J. Faragher told Richard F. Geyer, 44. “All of us have a bit of a monster within us. It is how you dealt with that monster that brings us here today. Now you realize how foolish and stupid you were.” Read More>>

Local Teen Meets Sex Offender On MySpace - Man Served 11 Years For Attempted Rape - It all started with chatting on MySpace. It seemed harmless enough at the time to a 15-year old girl who we'll call Tara .
She admitted a lot of girls her age try to meet people online, and the older man she met was paying her a lot of attention. Tara admits that at first she was pretending to be older. She claimed to be 20, even posted it on her MySpace page.
So Tara decided to walk to her local church, where she said Boehm picked her up in a van and took her to the local American Legion post parking lot, where they had sex.
Her mother said she had no idea it happened.
Detective Brian Fields said predators don't have to hide in the woods or on playgrounds anymore.
"If you have a child that's using a computer, you have got to know what they are doing," Read More>>

Paedophile locked up after Grooming Teenager for Sex - A PAEDOPHILE preyed on a 15-year-old girl after grooming her through Internet chat rooms.
Christopher Johnson, of Darlington , had sex with the girl and took indecent images of her after entering teen chat rooms last year.
He was jailed for two years after pleading guilty at Newcastle Crown Court to 15 sexual offences.
After using the Internet to make contact with this young girl, Johnson then travelled to North Tyneside from Darlington in order to have sex with this underage child.
Detective Constable Dave Kernaghan, of North Tyneside police, said: "This case ably demonstrates the dangers of chat rooms which are aimed at teenagers, but can easily be accessed by adults who use them deliberately as a means of finding young girls and grooming them for sexual purposes.” Read More>>

Man jailed over sex with internet teen - A 35-year-old Perth man has been jailed for having sex with a 14-year-old girl he met on the internet and persuaded to pose for explicit photos.
Anza had digital and oral sex with the teenager in a car and at a friend's home in October 2006, where they took the girl after he met her on an adult chat website.
The girl, who called herself sexy blonde 123, posted her age on the website as 20 years old. Read More>>

Man accused of sex with Bucks girl, 13 - A 20-year-old Pohatcong Township , N.J. , man has been charged with statutory rape and other offenses for allegedly having sex with a 13-year-old Richlandtown girl he met on the Internet.
He allegedly met the girl in a chat room and had various telephone conversations with her before meeting her several times in Richlandtown, where they allegedly engaged in various degrees of sexual contact.
The Man showed up at her house and threatened to hurt her or her family if she did not come outside to meet him. Read More>>

MySpace Link to Girl's Disappearance - Cops Fear Vt. 12-Year-Old May Have Gone To Meet Someone She Met Through the Online Social Site MySpace. - The search for a missing 12-year-old girl broadened Friday, as divers searched a lake, the FBI joined in and police investigators turned to officials at MySpace.Com, the online social networking site through which she had been communicating with an unknown person prior to her disappearance.
"This case is about a MySpace visitation," said Col. James Baker. "Our focus is on the communications Brooke may have had via that media."
A major focus of the investigation was centered on her online activities.
As we all know, warnings have gone out countless times, in this world that we live in today, there are folks that visit places, social networking spaces such as MySpace, whose intentions are not good. And they come from far away. Read More>>

NZ girl sent porn to get gaming points - A 12-year-old girl was persuaded to send 300 sexually explicit photos of her over the Internet in exchange for points on a gaming site. The girl's account had been hacked which resulted in the loss of her game credits. An anonymous game player who offered to restore the credits she had lost contacted her. In return, the girl was asked to send sexually explicit photographs of herself to the player. Over time, these requests become more graphic in nature.
Customs manager of investigations warned that parents needed to be aware of what their children were doing on the Internet. "Once images are on the web they are effectively there forever," he said. This could be your daughter! Find out what your kids are doing on the Internet. Read More>>

Man Charged With Sex With 13-Year-Old He Met On Chat Line - A statutory rape charge was bound to the Grand Jury on Monday against a 32-year-old Chattanooga man who allegedly had sexual contact with a 13-year-old girl he met on an Internet chat line.
The girl said she met Cahill via the Internet and he came over to her house.
Prosecutor Steve Smith called Cahill "every parent's nightmare." Read More>>

Where Can A Pedophile Find Their Next Victim? Try An Online Social Networking Venue - Go to a website, set up an account and create a profile. That is all that is required of a child in order to set up a MySpace account and is all that was needed for Kenneth Thomsa to find the four teen girls who he lured into bed and videotaped.
He used his MySpace account to meet the four young girls. He encouraged them to sneak out of their homes in the nighttime and come to his house, where they had sex. Read More>>

Area man indicted on molestation, porn charges - A federal grand jury indicted a 33-year-old Monrovia man Tuesday, claiming he seduced 10 teenage girls over the Internet, had sex with them and took pornographic photos of the girls.
Serrano allegedly used "social networking sites on the Internet to convince high school-age girls to have sex with him and pose for pornographic pictures,"
A Netlog profile apparently created by Serrano features a photograph of him wearing only a towel and lists 27 young girls as his online "friends." Twenty-three of them are minors.
Serrano claimed to be a 17-year-old student on the page and listed his hobbies as "photography and kissing." Read More>>

Alabama man to face kidnapping charge in Internet sex case - A 21-year-old Alabama man is on his way to Greenville to face charges that he had sexual chats with a 14-year-old girl over the Internet before picking her up from Northwest Middle School April 25 and driving her to his home.
He and the girl met in an Internet chat room as early as March and chatted daily online or through text messages.
The two agreed to meet for sex, the warrant alleges. The defendant drove to Greenville and picked up the victim from school before driving her home. Read More>>

Five years' jail for under-age chat room sex - A Christchurch man's sexual contact with three Auckland girls, who lied about their ages on internet adult chat-rooms, has led to a five-year jail term imposed in Christchurch District Court today.
Two of the girls were aged 15 and one was aged only 12 and was wearing her intermediate school uniform when 57-year-old Lawrence John Davidson met her on the street after the internet contact. Read More>>

Fake Web profiles helped seduce young girl, court told - A Melbourne man who lured an underage American girl into an online relationship asked her to join him in a suicide pact after police started investigating him, an Australian court heard. He pursued an online relationship with his victim, who lives in the United States with her parents, for the past three years, since she was 12 years old.
It is believed the defendant had accessed pornography sites and used images to create female social networking profiles on MySpace and Facebook internet sites, then used these profiles to encourage the victim to send sexually explicit images of herself to the defendant. Read More>>

Victim Shares Terrifying Tale of Internet Predator - "When I was 13 years old, I was lured away from my home by an internet predator," says Alicia Kozakiewicz.
"He just told me everything I wanted to hear and what I thought I needed to hear-- and he became my best friend," she explains.
After eight months chatting, she met her internet friend near her Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania home. He turned out to be a 38-year-old man.
"He took me to his home in Virginia and took me to his dungeon and held me captive. Read More>>

Teen helps police nab online predator - A local teenager helped police catch a Londonderry man who was trying to lure a young girl over the Internet for sex.
Police said Andrew Farrington, 21, was communicating with a 13-year-old girl over Facebook and MySpace for approximately two months.
Farrington had arranged to meet with the girl whom he had propositioned for sex, police said. Then the girl told her friend about the incident, who then set up a sting. Read More>>

Missing girl had MSN suicide chat - Nadia Kajouji was discussing suicide with another person on the Internet the day she went missing from her Carleton University residence, her father said yesterday.
Mohamad Kajouji said his 18-year-old daughter was talking with the unknown person on MSN Messenger all day March 9 until she told a roommate she was going skating on the Rideau Canal that night.
Ottawa police met with Kajouji last Thursday and told him they found records of the conversation on the teen's computer.
The person Nadia was talking to seemed to know a lot about suicide Read More>>

Study: Kids put profiles on older sites - If the internet at its worst is a lair for child predators, child safety folks have the best of reasons to worry about social networking sites, where members are invited to post all sorts of revealing information about themselves.
Now they have even more reason to worry.
A just-released study reveals that a large numbers of 8- to 11-year-olds are flouting age restrictions and creating profile pages on sites meant for teenagers and young adults. Read More>>

Teacher jailed for preying on teenager on the web - A former primary school teacher was jailed for nearly three years today after admitting abusing a young girl via a webcam and downloading hundreds of indecent images of children.
The court heard how the pedophile, who worked at Minster Primary School for six years, swapped messages with a vulnerable teenager on an internet chat room, before enticing her into performing a degrading act in front of a web cam. Read More>>

How one in four teenagers has met a stranger on the internet - A quarter of teenagers have met up with a stranger they got to know via the internet, a survey reveals.
Twenty-one per cent of girls and 28 per cent of boys put themselves at risk from paedophiles by meeting so-called "cyber friends" in person.
The figures, based on interviews with 15 to 16-year- olds, show youngsters routinely ignore warnings about the dangers of social networking on the Web.
The findings back up a report by Ofcom earlier this week which revealed parents are alarmingly ignorant of the danger posed to children by such sites. Read More>>

Mother warns others about Internet luring dangers - A mother of a 14-year-old girl who was allegedly abducted by a man three times her age is warning parents about the dangers of the Internet.
The mother says, "There are so many predators out there, and kids are so naïve. They will believe everything they're told on the Internet."
"It's very important for parents to try to and attempt to monitor their children's activities on the Internet to know who they're speaking with, what kind of chat rooms they're visiting," Const. Jeffrey Norman, of the Winnipeg Police Service said. Read More>>

Man groomed girls via chatrooms - A Man used internet chat rooms to meet underage girls before sexually assaulting some of them, police say.
The offences were allegedly committed against 13 girls aged between 12 and 17 years in various locations across NSW and the ACT, police say.
Police will allege the girls were contacted via internet chat rooms before the man arranged to meet some of them face-to-face. In some cases the girls were then sexually assaulted, police say. Read More>>

Internet predator jailed 3 years - Red-faced and unwilling to make eye contact with anyone in the courtroom, Mark Bedford apologized on Friday to the underage girls - reportedly numbering in the hundreds - he fooled into performing degrading sexual acts in front of Internet cameras for his own sexual gratification.
He would take over personal Internet accounts and, using a high-pitched voice, adeptly impersonate girls to trick friends on their contact list into flashing their breasts. He captured the images and used them to blackmail girls as young as nine and 10. He was persistent and threatened physical harm if victims were defiant, court was told.
Judge Beaman noted that Mr. Bedford used his advanced knowledge of computer systems and targeted girls under 14. "He knew the acts were wrong, but remained oblivious to the harm they caused. Read More>>

Carbon man gets probation for Web sex chat with teen - A 29-year-old Carbon County man who police say told a 15-year-old girl over the Internet he would give her alcohol and drugs before they had sex in a parking lot was sentenced Thursday to five years' probation.
The man and the girl communicated through an Internet chat room and on the Internet social community MySpace.com. The girl identified herself as a 15-year-old, but he engaged her in sexual conversation. Read More>>

Fort Wayne suspect braves storm to see teen - A Fort Wayne man drove about 260 miles “through a hell of a snowstorm” to meet a 14-year-old girl at an Ohio restaurant
Massillon is about 54 miles south of Cleveland and, like most of the Buckeye State , was pummeled by a storm that dumped between 12 and 24 inches of snow beginning Friday.
Pritchard had been communicating online with the 14-year-old girl a little more than a month, Massillon police Detective Bobby Grizzard said.
Pritchard was chatting with a 14-year-old girl, and Friday was to be the first in-person meeting.
The conversations were taking place in an online chat room, but Pritchard did not approach the girl through a Web site like MySpace.com. Read More>>

Man Charged With Posing As Teen Online, Molesting Girl - Many parents think their child will never fall victim to an online predator, but police said a southern Indiana girl befriended someone on MySpace she thought was a fellow teen. Now he's charged with child molestation.
Before Anthony Gardner, 22, was arrested Tuesday night, police said he spent time posing as a younger man and that he picked up a middle school student, took her home and molested her.
"I think probably there's a piece of her that's lost forever," said the victim's mother, who asked to be identified as Samantha. "Yeah, she lost all innocence." Read More>>

Man pleads guilty in MySpace case - The 48-year-old man, accused of raping two teenagers, using MySpace to target them, pleaded guilty Friday to two counts of statutory rape, and was sentenced to at least 40 years in prison.
The prosecutors told the Observer that the victims, both girls, were from Charlotte and were 14 and 15 at the time of the sexual assaults.
Prosecutors said the man struck up a relationship with the girls through MySpace posing as a man in his 20's. He also chatted with them through AOL.
"Predators don't have to snatch kids from the street anymore," Miller said. "All they have to do is type in seven little letters `MySpace' on a computer and they have literally thousands of children to pick from." Read More>>

Former Teacher Pleads Guilty in Internet Predator Case - A former Johnson County teacher pleaded guilty Tuesday to using a computer to entice a minor to engage in sexual activity.
He admitted that he chatted with two minor girls via Web cam. He asked them to undress and show themselves to the camera, which they did. He saved the Web cam images to the hard drive of his computer. During that incident, he was posing as a boy named Ely.
A forensic examination of the computer revealed that it contained 1,890 images of child pornography and 34 videos of child pornography. Read More>>

Concord Teacher Accused of Sex with Students - A teacher's assistant at Concord High School is in jail tonight, charged with having sex with two of his students.
Police say he used the popular web site MySpace to arrange and encourage the activity.
Police say he met the girls at school, and then used the popular social networking web site MySpace to advance the relationship. Read More>>

Police Arrest "MySpace" Predator - A Melbourne man was arrested after authorities say he sexually abused a 14-year-old girl he had met over the social networking site MySpace.
Authorities say he had met with the girl twice after contacting her online in late October. At their second meeting authorities say McGrew also sexually abused another teenage girl. Read More>>

Father-of-four jailed for grooming schoolgirl - A FATHER-of-four who groomed a 13-year-old Grantham schoolgirl over the internet before attempting to meet her for sex was today jailed for six years.
The man contacted the teenager through a chatroom and after two months of exchanging sexually explicit messages the pair arranged to meet in Grantham.
"There were many communications between them in which he brought up the question of sex and made sexually suggestive remarks to her."
Mr Alford said that Lowrey suggested to the girl that they have sex in the toilets at Grantham Hospital . Read More>>

Girl says she was coerced into sending photo - A 12-year-old girl says she was coerced and threatened into sending naked pictures of herself via the Internet.
Burleigh County Sheriff Pat Heinert said the girl and her family reported the incident on Wednesday.
Heinert said a family member of the girl discovered a digital photograph of the girl and questioned her about it. She said she had been in one chatroom and was coerced into going into a different chatroom.
She said she was then threatened to send naked photographs to the person with whom she was talking, Heinert said.
The girl said she does not know who she was talking to or who received the photographs, Heinert said. Read More>>

Chat room man held - A 28-YEAR-OLD man has been arrested for sexually grooming four young girls from Chippenham on the Internet.
The man is accused of grooming four girls, all between the ages of 12 and 14, on Internet chat rooms and asking them sexual questions.
"In this instance the children were contacted by an adult purporting to be a child. This is a serious offence.
"Chatrooms, instant messaging and social networking websites are becoming increasing popular for schoolchildren but they also attract some adults who take advantage of their curious nature."
Sergeant Steve Cox at Chippenham Police said: "We strongly recommend that parents do not allow their children to have computers in their bedrooms.
"It is also advisable that webcams are only installed where a parent can view the computer screen. Read More>>

Custodian Allegedly Assaults Girl He Met In Chat Room - A 20-year-old custodian for the Denver Museum of Nature and Science was arrested last week; accused of having sexual contact with a 12-year-old girl he had met through the social networking site, Mocospace.com.
They exchanged text messages and talked on the phone a few times before Sanchez-Castro drove to the girl's house in Golden and picked her up in his car, where he sexually assaulted her on two separate occasions, according to court documents.
Mocosopace.com is a chat room that is more widely used by teens than traditional chat rooms, because they can chat by text messaging with their cell phones, authorities said.
We have to remain diligent in trying to keep up with what kids are doing on the Internet as well as with trends online. Read More>>

Another MySpace Predator Caught Going After Children - On the same day MySpace and the attorneys general for 49 states announced an agreement that will allow parents to have their kids' email addresses blocked from the social networking site we get this tragic story out of Florida:
A Tampa man met two girls, aged 14 and 12, through MySpace and met up with them to have sex. After the 14-year-old confided in her parents about what happened, the police nabbed the pervert after he attempted a second meeting with the younger girl. Read More>>

The dark side of the Internet - It takes less than a couple of minutes to find and log into an internet website that will offer you nearly 50 ways to go about committing suicide, including the precise number of paracetamol tablets needed, or the mechanics of hanging. Gruesome as this is, there is worse to be found - internet chat rooms where depressed or impressionable teenagers discuss taking their own lives.
Most parents are still of a generation which does not realize such information is readily available through the PC in a child's bedroom. Read More>>

Man Accused of Recruiting Girls for Child Porn on MySpace - A 48-year-old man is accused of using a popular Internet site to meet and encourage teenage girls to participate in child pornography.
Published reports say David Evans posed as a 20-year-old on his MySpace page.
Cheektowaga police and the FBI have linked Evans to six teenage girls so far, and believe ten others have been victimized. Read More>>

Internet linked to assault charges: Former Port City man arrested - A former resident was arrested Friday for allegedly using the popular website MySpace to lure an underage girl into having sex with him on three separate occasions, according to police.
The charges allege Smith used a computer while he was living in Portsmouth to communicate with and solicit sex from the minor. Two of the sexual assault charges are believed to have occurred in Epping, the third in Portsmouth. Read More>>

Ex-district secretary guilty of soliciting 2 students - A former Jim Thorpe Area School District secretary faces decades in prison and lifetime registration with authorities after admitting Thursday in Carbon County Court that he solicited sex from two 14-year-old girls who were students at the school where he worked.
Remmel admitted he solicited the girls through MySpace.com, a popular social networking Web site. Read More>>

Pervert jailed for preying on young girls - A SEX menace who used the internet to prey on teenage girls was behind bars last night.
Robin David Blewett was finally caught after he lured a 16-year-old girl, from York , into his home.
An inquiry found a further four teenage victims and catalogue of more than two million pornographic photographs and child abuse images on computers and discs in his home.
The inquiry also revealed he had used the internet to compile a database of more than 500 named teenage girls.
After Blewett was sentenced, Detective Chief Inspector Neil Thewsey described him as a systematic and predatory sex offender, who posed a very serious risk to teenage girls throughout the country.
He urged parents to keep a watchful eye on their children's internet usage, adding: "It is extremely disturbing to think that the girls involved in the investigation were approached by this perverted man while sat in their own homes. Read More>>

Detectives: Man met Lakeland teen through MySpace and sexually battered her - A Fort Lauderdale man is under arrest after investigators he performed sexual acts on a 14 year old Lakeland teenager he met through MySpace.
Detectives say 39-year-old Richard Gagnon Jr came to Lakeland on multiple occasions to after talking with the teen through MySpace, instant messaging and via cell phone. Read More>>

MySpace Leads Channel 4 To Some Teens' Homes - Parents Urged To Check Kids' Web Pages
From teens running away, to sexual predators on the prowl, most people have heard of some of the dangers that have been linked to popular networking Web site MySpace.
While some youngsters might think they're not posting much personal information, Channel 4 reporter Laura Mazzeo learned a startling reality -- it doesn't take much to learn who is behind the profile and where to find that person.
Mazzeo spent just a few hours looking at Web pages open to anyone on MySpace. She reported all she needed was a full name and a hometown to find some local teens. Read More>>

Sign up for our newsletter - About once every other week, we will deliver reasons and resources to help keep your family safe online. The next issue will be sent out shortly. Until then, keep the kids safe! Preview the previous Online Safety Resource Newsletter

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.