Another Xbox sex crime

In yet another piece of alarming news, Fresno police arrested Edward Stout, a 27 year old Missouri man, for having sex with a 15 year old girl he met through the Xbox Live network. Edward Stout faces federal charges of coercion of a minor over the Internet and traveling across state lines to engage in sex with a minor.

Unfortunately, this is not the first known report where sexual predators have used innocuous gaming networks to prey on underaged victims. Japanese police have noticed an alarming trend where pedophiles would seek to engage young gamers through gaming sites. Further, two previous and well publicized arrests for sexual crimes in the US are linked with the Xbox Live network.

Stout is being held in Fresno County Jail, where he also faces state charges of lewd conduct with a juvenile and oral copulation with a person younger than 16. Those charges are likely to be dropped, clearing the way for Stout to make his initial appearance this week in U.S. District Court in Fresno on the federal charges.

In a 13-page criminal affidavit, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, details how the relationship started last March when Stout was playing Xbox games over the Internet with the girl’s brother. The relationship grew to the point that Stout sent the girl a cell phone in December for her 15th birthday, which the two used to exchange sexually explicit photos and more than 1,000 text messages. Stout finally drove from Missouri to California — bringing along his dog and arriving the night of Monday, Jan. 26. The girl met him down the street from her house, where they kissed and touched one another.

About 2 a.m. Tuesday, the affidavit said, the girl’s father awoke to find her bed empty. He later found her with Stout, who was standing next to a car with Missouri license plates. A verbal confrontation ensued, and Stout left.

On Wednesday, Stout allegedly called the girl’s school posing as her father and saying she would be absent that day. After the father learned that his daughter wasn’t in school, he went to the police. They found Stout at his motel. Further investigation found that he and the girl had a sexual encounter Wednesday at the motel.

The girl’s father told police he discovered the relationship and tried to stop it, but that the two continued to communicate via phone and the Internet. At one point, the father spoke to Stout and told him to stop calling his daughter because she was underage.

Still, the father told police he was not overly concerned “because he was aware that Stout resided in Missouri and therefore did not consider [him] a threat to the physical safety of his daughter.”

Lessons of the story:

(1)  Monitor your kids’ gaming activities, especially on networks frequented by adults as well as kids

(2) A sexual predator will travel hundreds of miles in order to satiate his desires. Don’t assume that distance will keep your kids safe.

Source

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