Welcome to part one of our journey into the underbelly of pedophile and child sex trafficking society. These are lessons learned from the best pedophile hunters on the planet.
“Probation!?”
At this point, I raised my voice a little.
“Look, he has no criminal history and they’re claiming you falsified a report about the search warrant you got for his phone. So, if we don’t offer him a decent plea, they’ll take you through Giglio hearings trying to discredit you and, if by some crazy miracle the Judge agrees with them, you’ll be impeached as a witness and never be able to testify again.”
The Assistant District Attorney paused, letting his words sink in.
“I know you didn’t do anything wrong. But they’re trying to twist the words in your report to make it look like you intentionally lied to him to get the passcode for his phone and then lied in your report. I’ve worked with you on dozens of cases before this and I know your quality of work. This case is airtight and he’s looking at multiple Off-Grid Felonies which are punishable by up to LIFE in prison. But I don’t want top put you through all these hearings. They’re stressful. And the reality is, a lot of the evidence you found showing he was sharing toddler porn with other people can’t be used in court because MegaNZ didn’t provide you a Certificate of Authenticity when they gave you the files.”
“All we have at this point is the fact he met up with you for sex thinking you were a 14-year old girl. It’s only enough to charge him with Electronic Solicitation of a Child. We can also probably charge him with Sexual Exploitation of a Child for the couple of CSAM images you found saved on his phone. I think we have to give him a plea deal for Felony Probation.”
Yes, you read that right. Probation… For a 35-year-old married man working for a huge technology company who attempted to meet a 14-year-old girl for sex in his car at a public parking lot belonging to a nature center. Never mind the fact the 14-year-old girl was 5’10” with cauliflower ear and a beard.
I had chatted with this man for over a year undercover using a 14-year-old girl as a persona, starting on the Whisper App and eventually moving to Wickr. He clearly had experience and employed various grooming techniques, to which I played along. Our conversation started innocently enough with him asking what I was looking for on Whisper and what my family was like. Eventually, after he found out “Samantha” didn’t have a father figure in her life and fought with her mother all the time, our suspect became the “father figure” she’d always wanted, offering advice, encouragement, and compliments.
I’ve done hundreds of these undercover chats and they always follow the same pattern. These men (And, yes. Almost 100% of my cases have been men.) look for a very specific type of child. One who is easily manipulated into needing their attention and love because they lack it at home. And, specifically, one who has no father. Because fathers scare these cowards. An involved father terrifies a pedophile more than any other aspect of a child’s life. Take note, many of these predators have told me they move on to a different target when they find out a child has a good relationship with an involved father figure. Or Uncle. Or male teacher/coach. Fathers and other protective male figures are the single most important aspects to preventing predatory behavior from pedophiles. But… I digress.
We chatted for a long time and then, out of nowhere one day, he told me he was scared of getting in trouble and that we couldn’t talk anymore.
“Good decision,” I can remember thinking to myself.
I moved on to other suspects and other investigations until, a year later, I received a message from him on Wickr.
Do you send nudes?
That’s it. That’s all the message said. After an entire year of thinking about me, the most romantic thing he could come up with was “Do you send nudes?” This is not an uncommon phenomenon. Any Investigator or Detective who does this job will tell you predators often break off contact in a very rare moment of clarity, common sense, and potential integrity. But this is a compulsion for a pedophile and they never stay gone for long. A week. A month. A year. Eventually they come back. Because even though they see red flags and deep down know this is too good to be true, they are driven. So driven to manipulate and prey on our children they can’t help but hope it’s real. So they reach back out and the game starts all over again.
When I received the Wickr message, I immediately knew who it was based on the screen name. But I played dumb.
Lol, who is this?
I knew I needed to get him to admit to previously messaging me. It would show a nexus between this conversation and our previous one. Especially since our first conversation took place on Whisper and this was Wickr, a separate and vastly different application.
A guy from Whisper that used to talk to you a while back.
Bingo.
U do remember I’m 14, right? Lol.
No response. I put my phone down. Well, maybe he didn’t remember my age. Perhaps he will now make the correct choice to disappear into the cyber world full of “almost pedophiles”. Those who are attracted to children but too scared to do anything except look at child porn. I opened up my other files and got to work on a search warrant for a different case. My phone vibrated.
Lol I do remember. I’m just trying not to go to jail is all lmao.
Never mind. He chose to go full pedophile. The conversation went on for a long time and I won’t bore you, or disgust you, with all the details. Yet. But, needless to say, he asked for nude images. Then asked me to take nude images of my 14-year-old classmates in the locker room. Then informed me he wanted to “eat some pussy and get some head” (I lied about not disgusting you with details). And FINALLY, he got to the point of this whole conversation.
Just throwing this out there but…We could meet.
Game. Set. Match. Now the game picks up a sense of urgency. It’s not easy to get to this point with a suspect. They’re a notoriously suspicious group of people, for good reason, and it takes multiple “chatting” techniques, an understanding of case law and “entrapment” issues, as well as serious flexibility with my schedule.
After a year of chatting and getting “comfortable” with each other, it took only five hours from the time he sent me the first message on Wickr to the time he was sitting in the back of a Patrol vehicle in handcuffs. It could take years for a pedophile to groom a child. But once they think they’re in a position to safely victimize the child, they move fast. It becomes a game of minutes to hours instead of months to years.
Check back next week to hear about the arrest and subsequent interrogation of our suspect!
Enjoy content from Guardian Training Solutions? Make us one of your preferred sources on Google.
