33-year-old Ivory Dickerson of North Carolina was sentenced to 110 years. He was accused of hacking into the MySpaces of girls from Brevard County, Florida. Sentence a little harsh you say? Well, Dickerson would hack into the MySpaces and the girls’ computers to try to extort pornographic images of themselves. Sentence still too harsh you say?
While investigating the hacking case, the local FBI Innocent Images Task Force uncovered a cache of child pornography dating to 1998 and videos of Dickerson with young girls, thought to be about 15 years old. In the video, Dickerson boasts of drinking with them in his room and having sexual encounters with them, according to court records.
21-year-old Brian Johnathan Schultz of Edmonton, Alberta pleaded guilty to charges of distributing child porn. It seems that Schultz was dating a girl who was 16 and photographed their sexual exploits. The girl tried to end the relationship but Schultz couldn’t accept that. Schultz had started posting nude pictures of the girl on his Nexopia profile and was offering more for anyone who requested. When the girl contacted Nexopia the photos were pulled. Schultz then presented the girl with a diamond ring but the girl still refused. Then Schultz had set up a complete website offering photos of the girl.
The age of consent is 18 years where the sexual activity involves exploitative activity, such as prostitution, pornography or where there is a relationship of trust, authority or dependency. For other sexual activity, the age of consent is 14 years.
So the sex was legal but the photos were not.
Schultz is set to be sentenced early next year.
First off I’ll probably have my man card revoked for this but ladies, don’t let your SOs take nude photos of you. Eventually, they’ll find their way to the internet. Now to the guys, we’ve all been there. We’ve all had the girlfriend that we wanted back no matter the cost after we got dumped. However, have some dignity and let her go. You’ll both be better off that way.
Pictured at left is one James C. Hart. He’s a coach, a youth volunteer, and a champion powerlifter. Since I’m posting about him here you know he’s not being profiled as a pillar of the community. He’s accused of making child porn. Apparently he used MySpace to find some of his victims.
Hart allegedly used the website My Space.com to persuade girls as young as 14-years-old to take nude pictures of themselves and send them to him.
Using a screen name “J-C”, with a profile that said he was 18-years-old, investigators said Hart went so far as to tell the teens to write those initials on their bodies before taking the pictures.
The affidavit shows that the allegations against Hart stemmed from a mother’s discovery. The paperwork shows that she found sexually explicit images of her 16-year-old daughter on the home computer.
Hart was allegedly coercing the 16-year-old using MySpace.com to have her send more images. In a chat, the affidavit shows, Hart messaged the girl, saying, “Maybe I will just print the pics (another girl) sent me and pass them around town with your name on them.” The girl responded: “I don’t like it when people are so controllive.” Hart responded: “Look, I am not asking. I am telling you, send the pics now,” the affidavit shows. Sgt. Scott Christensen could not talk about Hart’s case, but said that in other Internet sex cases he investigates, it is common for predators to coerce children into sending more photographs.
It seems he had the prerequisite hidden camera too.
Police said that Hart would have the girls over to his duplex, where he would coach them and have them change their clothes in a dressing room where he hid the camera. “Parents need to be aware,” said Christensen. “They need to be involved. Unfortunately, our coaches aren’t some place like you drop your kids off for baby-sitting.”
There were three different girls videotaped in Hart’s basement, police said, and all three have been identified and notified.
Since he was using a bogus MySpace account I could not locate it but…
Hart’s MySpace.com profile listed himself as an 18-year-old male. He had over 1,000 friends.
That’s one sick dude right there.
And from that picture doesn’t he look like he should be looking for his red Swingline stapler?
Carl Courtright of Granite City, Illinois was one of those registered sex offenders that had a profile on MySpace when he shouldn’t have. Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan used that to obtain a search warrant to Courtright’s home.
Police searched the house on the morning of Aug. 9 and seized several computers, hard drives, and computer equipment.
One DVD, listed in the search warrant return, is titled “Dateline NBC to Catch a Predator.”
Investigators with Madigan’s High Tech Crimes Bureau used IP address information obtained from MySpace to learn that Courtright had been actively trading pornographic images over the Internet.
“Child predators who think they are safe hiding behind a computer screen are no longer anonymous,” Madigan said in a written release. “We have the technology and we are committed to using all of our resources to seek them out and hold them accountable for their crimes.”
It’s nice to see that a state attorney general is using the information to go after criminals and not just MySpace.
I originally posted about Joshua Innes here. He’s the 25-year-old creep from Montreal who blackmailed underage girls into stripping for him using the Canadian social site Nexopia.
He was sentenced to 9 years behind bars by an Edmonton judge.
Provincial court Judge James Wheatley said Joshua Innes’ crimes are “unprecedented” and that other predators must be deterred from following suit.
I don’t think a nine-year sentence is going to be enough to discourage these kinds of predators.
It seems that LiveJournal/SixApart has finally taken a step closer to reality by banning fanfiction that has underage characters (i.e. children) engaging in sexual situations. In other words, they’re banning child porn erotica.
Six Apart has been firming up its policies on legal and illegal content, and this time mature-themed stories with underaged characters are in the spotlight. Livejournal personnel posted today that there is a “zero-tolerance policy” in effect for specific categories of posts and behaviors. Alongside material that “encourages or advocates hate crimes, rape, or child abuse or pedophilia,” and ” material that asks for assistance in committing illegal activities that cause serious physical/economic harm,” certain types of fiction are also banned as (allegedly) illegal under U.S. law.
Specifically Livejournal has stated: “This includes threats of physical harm against the President or other executive officers, child pornography (photos or videos), or other material — including drawings and text — that explicitly depicts minors under the age of 18 (real or not) in a graphic sexual context. Or, in other words: Romeo and Juliet is okay. Teens talking about their experiences with sex is okay. Smut focused on a twelve year old is not okay.”
The teens from Werribee, Australia who are facing charges for distributing a DVD of them sexually assaulting a girl have had additional charges filed against them.
A children’s court heard yesterday the boys, two aged 16, six 17-year-olds and three aged 18 will face another charge each of procuring the victim to take part in sexual penetration by intimidation.
Four of the accused boys have been charged with two counts of procuring sexual penetration by intimidation and making child pornography, and seven face the same three charges plus one count of assault.
Up to 12 boys were investigated for allegedly coercing the Year 12 girl to have sex in the homemade DVD, titled C— the Movie, allegedly made between June 1 and June 30 last year.
The ten minute film was copied and distributed to students at Werribee schools.
The film showed the girl performing a sex act, being urinated on, and having her hair set alight.
Sources told the Herald Sun in November at least one of the teens allegedly featured on the DVD continued a relationship with the victim for several months after the film was made.
But will these charges bring a longer sentence if these thugs get any real sentence at all?
41-year-old Joseph Burkett of Sound Beach, New York was arrested on Thursday on charges of molesting 5 boys.
The police investigation began several weeks ago when officers received an anonymous tip “that an adult male may have a MySpace page and (may) be looking for young boys to sexually exploit,” said Suffolk County Police Detective Sgt. John Cowie.
Cowie said MySpace had no involvement in the investigation, nor culpability in the case. “That’s just where he (Burkett) went shopping for victims, so to speak.”
On Tuesday, a police officer spotted a car in front of a Sound Beach house that matched a description given by the tipster. He went to the door, found Burkett living there and noticed two 12-year-old boys in the house, authorities said.
“We still didn’t have a crime at that point,” Cowie said.
On Wednesday, police returned with a search warrant, and seized Burkett’s computer and a digital camera.
On Thursday, after images of children being sexually exploited allegedly were found, Burkett was arrested.
Cowie said that five victims have been identified; one of the boys was from the Binghamton area in upstate New York and met Burkett via MySpace.
He said some of the boys were given bicycles, toys and other gifts to keep quiet.
Of course, Burkett pleaded not guilty. I would love to hear the defense on this one. He’s being held on $500K bail.
Is there something in the water in Naperville, Illinois? This is the third or fourth predator story that I’ve posted about that has happened in Naperville. Is it the pedo holy land of the Midwest?
Anyway, 30-year-old Anthony Kershaw, formerly of Naperville, was arrested Friday on child porn charges. Police were tipped off to “suspicious activity” on a MySpace that he created.
A forensic examination of a computer seized from Kershaw’s former Naperville home revealed 100 images of child pornography, police said.
That’s not a small number. Maybe they should make a law that says for every piece of child porn you get caught with you get a year in prison. 100 years for this creep sounds about right, doesn’t it?
Now, this is a story about how responsible parents act.
After a Naperville father noticed his daughter spending more time than usual on the Internet, he installed parental monitoring software to keep a closer eye on her.
His action last summer may have kept the 13-year-old girl out of a convicted sex offender’s clutches.
A Salt Lake City man was sentenced Tuesday to 17¨ years in federal prison in Utah for persuading the girl to send him sexually explicit photos of herself during three months of cyberspace chats and phone calls.
Gerald Lee Wheeler, 41, was arrested last year in Utah after a multi-agency investigation. He pleaded guilty March 26 to one count of production of child pornography, which carries a mandatory 15-year minimum sentence.
Prosecutors said Wheeler was trying to get the teen to meet him in New York for sex in exchange for a modeling contract. Fortunately, her father intervened before the girl was physically harmed.
Of course, Wheeler is a registered sex offender in Utah.
Anyway, do you see how easy it is to protect your kids? If not you shouldn’t be operating a computer in the first place.
