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The Dodge County Sheriff's Office completed a online sting operation aimed to catch sexual predators. For five nights this month... Officers in the Sheriff's Office and the Kasson Police Department posed as 14-year-old girls on an online chat site. The Dodge County Sheriff says they were contacted by hundreds of people, often soliciting sex from females.
Authorities arrested these seven men after they came to a location where each thought he would meet a 14-year-old girl. Officers arrested them and they all now face fines and prison time. Two of the men are from our area, 44-year-old Douglas Nelson of Waseca,Minnesota, and 33-year-old Gabriel Beal of Joice, Iowa.
Eight officers from the Kasson Police department and the Dodge County Sheriff's Office set up profiles on a Yahoo romance chat as 14-year-old girls. They went on the chat rooms for 12 hour shifts starting at 3 in the afternoon, and they say within minutes of logging on....they were bombarded by much older men with conversations about sex.
The Dodge County Sheriff's Office says sexual predators are in our own backyard. "It was overwhelming. I actually sat in a couple of the nights for a period of time and we had officers that as soon as they logged into the chat rooms, they were just inundated with responses. We had carrying on conversations with 6, 8, 10 people at a time," says Dodge County Sheriff Gary Thompson.
And those people, were much older than the 14 year-olds they thought they were talking to.Officers say to avoid entrapment issues, they let the leading of the conversation to whoever was on the other side of the computer. And they say in most cases, the topic eventually turned to sex.
After a couple nights of talking online, the officers playing the young girl told whoever they were talking with that "she" would be home alone and to meet at the girl's apartment in Dodge Center. And when they showed up, they were arrested. Wednesday afternoon, some undercover officers went back onto these chat rooms. And within seconds, one officer was being messaged by a 55-year-old man about sex.
"It really opened my eyes. We did some interviews with these folks after they were arrested and we had admissions from one person said he'd driven to Syracuse, New York, to have sex with a 15-year-old girl."
When these seven men went to meet who they thought was a teenager for sex, they were then arrested. They have been charged for solicitation of children to engage in sexual conduct and criminal sexual conduct in third degree attempt, which are both felonies and could face prison time.
"This is a small community and it's going on here and they need to be aware that it's happening."
Thompson says some of the seven who were arrested were married and have children. He says in a lot of the cases, The predators even sent officers text messages.
The Dodge County Sheriff's Department says all conversations will be used in court. And they plan on having sting operation like this one in the future.
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