Tuesday, December 28, 2010

SOCIAL NETWORKS, THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS OF SEXUAL PREDATORS

The dangers of social networking to kids is illustrated in the following sexual assault case:

Late on the night of December 20, a 12-year-old boy in the Houston suburb of West University Place asked his father if he could go and meet a friend to watch the lunar eclipse from a parking lot of an oil-change business near Houston’s medical center. When daddy said no, the kid went to his room, then sneaked out of the house.

An hour after saying no to his request, the father went to check on his son and found that he had stuffed a bunch of pillows under his bedspread to make it look like he was asleep in his bed. Dad then called the WUP police. Shortly after their arrival, the kid was found nearby walking home.

According to the Houston Press, the boy told police the friend’s name was Rudy. He said they had met on Facebook a couple of days before the eclipse and had since exchanged text messages. The boy is quoted in the police report, that on the night of the eclipse, Rudy had picked him up in a red Mustang and taken him to the oil-change business parking lot, where they “made out” in the car. The boy noticed it was getting late and asked to be taken home, and when he saw the police cars in front of his house, he told Rudy to drop him off down the street.

Using the boy’s cellphone, the police looked up Rudy’s Facebook page which pictured a red Mustang like the boy described. They were able to read the license plate from which they identified Rudy as Rudy Erik Candia, 36, a registered sex offender convicted in 2000 of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy. As a result, Candia was arrested on the felony charge of Online Solicitation of a Minor.

The police also found the texted pictures of Candia’s dick and asshole on the boy’s cellphone. Apparently that pair of celestial bodies got in the way of viewing the lunar eclipse.

No comments: