Last week two Kauai teenagers flew to California. But they weren’t checking out colleges. The 15 and 16-year old girls went to San Diego to hook up with a 22-year-old man they had met on the Internet. According to Mark
Last week two Kauai teenagers flew to California.
But they weren’t checking out colleges.
The 15 and 16-year old girls went to San Diego to hook up with a 22-year-old man they had met on the Internet.
According to Mark McConnell, a deputy state attorney general in charge of the one-year-old Hawai’i Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, the girls were met by San Diego police and FBI agents who sent the girls back to Kaua’i.
“I believe they were returned on the same plane (they arrived on),” McConnell said.
McConnell said the man was arrested on drug related charges.
Although Internet-based activities by adult sex offenders preying on young teenagers is growing, there is some confusion about this incident.
“It appears that they (the girls) may have misrepresented their ages (saying they were adults) and he may have misrepresented his age (downward),” McConnell said.
“From our perspective the problem is they were younger. The real problem is sometimes these young girls just go,” McConnell said.
In a more classic example of predatory behavior against a child, a 37-year-old Maui man was arrested at a Maui airport, also last week, while he awaited the arrival of a 15-year-old girl he had convinced to come to Maui via Internet conversations.
What the man, Thomas Schnepper did not know is that the alleged teenager was a special agent of the Wyoming Attorney general’s office and not a teenage girl.
“We’ve only been in business a little less than a year. Internet-based pornography and travel activities (seducing young underage girls to travel for sex) are a pretty common phenomenon over the last few years, and law enforcement hasn’t been (focused) in that area until recently,” McConnell said.
