EVERETT – The 24-year-old man told the junior high school-aged girl he met online that he wanted to meet her for sex, according to police.
He showed up outside an Everett store Tuesday afternoon like they planned. He had a condom in his pants pocket, according to police.
The girl never showed.
A Snohomish County sheriff’s detective did.
The detective had pretended to be the “girl” behind the computer screen. He arrested the suspect, a registered sex offender, for investigation of attempted second-degree rape of a child.
The suspect on Wednesday was being held in the Snohomish County Jail in lieu of $25,000 bail.
Snohomish County sheriff’s detectives are among a growing number of police across the country who are targeting people propositioning underage boys and girls for sex over the Internet.
“It’s one of the Internet crimes we’re monitoring online,” sheriff’s Capt. Jeff Miller said. “We’re taking a proactive approach, and sometimes our detectives pose as underage people to catch pedophiles.”
A week before he was arrested, the Everett man approached the detective online. The detective identified himself several times as a girl in her early teens, according to a police affidavit filed in Everett District Court on Wednesday. Sheriff’s detectives asked that the newspaper not publish exact details because they hope to use the ruse again.
The suspect engaged in sexually explicit conversations with someone he believed to be underage, the detective wrote in the court document.
The Internet has become an unsupervised playground for many children, detectives said.
The sheriff’s office joined the Seattle-based Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force based in Seattle about a year ago.
Two detectives are assigned to crack down on child pornography and adults who lure minors over the Internet.
Predators seek out children and teens in chat rooms and message boards. The offenders encourage victims to send photos or obscene pictures of themselves. They groom the young people, sometimes arranging meetings.
“This is an opportunity for us to stop someone from being victimized,” Miller said.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
