Monday, March 31, 2008

Man in court on internet sex charges - A man has appeared in court accused of using the internet to groom a 13-year-old US girl for sex and inciting her to commit suicide.
He appeared in Melbourne Magistrates Court today after being arrested at his home yesterday.
He faces four charges, including one of using the internet to send indecent material to groom a person under 16 for sexual activity.
He faces a further charge of using the internet to incite a female to commit or attempt to commit suicide and one of procuring the same girl with the aim of producing child pornography.
The offences are alleged to have occurred between January 2006 and March 27 this year.
Apparently they were chatting for 14 – months! I’m thinking a computer monitoring program would have let somebody know what was going on…..

Nowra man faces 30 sex charges - A NOWRA man has been charged with sex offences against 13 girls he allegedly contacted via internet chatrooms.
The 40-year-old was arrested in Goulburn on Wednesday and charged with 30 offences allegedly committed against 13 girls aged between 12 and 17 who lived at various locations.
Police alleged the girls were initially contacted via Internet chat rooms and in some cases the teenagers were allegedly sexually assaulted, according to police.
A Very Persistent Internet Predator…

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Internet sex fiend found dead in jail - He pretended to be 18 to befriend the girl on an internet chat site largely used by teenagers. He had sex with her daily until police caught them together almost a week later.
He was convicted of seven offences of sexual activity with a child under 16, one of meeting her after sexual grooming and two of possessing indecent images of her on his computer.
While he was grooming the girl, he was on bail for sexually assaulting a middle-aged woman by twice grabbing her bottom in the street in Shipley.
He died in prison less than a month into a five-year jail sentence.
Bummer...

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.
Mr. Bedford 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.
At least he apologized – I doubt that his fellow inmates will give him that satisfaction…

Monday, March 03, 2008

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."
When he finishes serving his minimum sentence, he'll be about 90 years old and won’t be posing much of a threat to anybody…