Pandora’s Blog

Couple of stories I’ve read about recently involving sickos on the Net… this is for all the skeptics that just keep saying “Oh, please. The Internet is safe… fears are overblown.”

Army recruiter accused of meeting teens on MySpace

22-year old Richard Brenton met two 16-year-old girls in February on MySpace. He arranged to meet them in Saratoga County [New York], and then brought them back to his Green Island home, where both stayed the night. Brenton allegedly the girls enough alcohol to get drunk. A parent of one of the children informed police of the incident. Police are still investigating and say more charges could come.

Aurora man arrested in child-sex sting

An Aurora [Colorado] man has been arrested in Corpus Christi, Texas, on suspicion of Internet luring of a child after a sting operation by undercover officers of the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office.

The man — identified as 43-year-old Joe Camacho — is currently in Corpus Christi awaiting extradition to Colorado, said Deputy Cocha Heyden, spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office.

Camacho came to the attention of the sheriff’s Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) unit in early December after he began an online conversation with what he believed to be an underage female, according to authorities.

In fact, the person Camacho was chatting with on an almost daily basis was an undercover ICAC officer, said Heyden.

In the conversations, Camacho said that although he lived in Aurora, he was working out of state.

Detectives were able to determine that the suspect was in Texas and believed he was about to leave the country.

With the assistance of the Corpus Christi Internet Crimes Against Children Unit, detectives located Camacho, who was arrested on a Douglas County warrant.

Heyden said Camacho was arrested Friday for investigation of one count of Internet luring of child, a Class 3 felony; 11 counts of Internet sexual exploitation of child, a Class 4 felony; and 22 counts of promotion of obscenity of a minor, a Class 6 felony.

Heyden said officers of the Douglas County ICAC unit go online posing as underage juveniles to see whether any sexual predators hit on the online messages. She said authorities can act against predators if they ask the “children” to perform certain sexual acts or if the predators send pornography to the child or ask the child to send pornography to them.

Douglas County Sheriff Dave Weaver said he appreciated the work of the ICAC unit.

“I am very impressed with the extra time the ICAC unit put into this when they learned that the suspect may be leaving the country,” said Weaver. “This type of dedication to the protection of our youth should be commended, and I am proud that these deputies work for me.”

Two more reasons to watch what your child is doing online. Thankfully the parents of one of the two 16-year-old girls caught on fast and the second incident involved no real kids (as far as we know – who knows who else he was chatting with…). But the second case also involves traveling hundreds of miles for the chance to have sex with a child, and the first scumbag is at the very least crossing counties lines and travelling to other towns… The first case also involves what appears to be consent on the teenage girls’ behalf. That should not be overlooked.

Point is, yes it’s a reality. You can either take steps to monitor and protect your kids (with PC Pandora) – or you can just cross your fingers and hope for the best.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 20th, 2008 at 11:07 AM and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.