Sexual Predators

Getting in Under Your Radar - Even When You’re Watching, Bad Things Can Happen

I included the Paul Brown case in my first book, A Parents’ Guide to the Internet. (He was sentenced in 1997, when I wrote the book.) I included it because it was a good example of how cyberpredators typically operate, and suggested that if the mother had been a bit more attentive, it might have been discovered earlier. I was right about how cyberpredators operate. I was wrong about how being attentive might have avoided the sexual exploitation. It takes more. It takes both an attentive parent and a teenager who has been taught how these pedophiles operate online.

In November 1998, I met a mother who did everything right. She was attentive and inquisitive about her daughter’s online relationships. She asked the right questions. She had a good relationship with her daughter, and yet Charles Hatch, a child molester from Utah, got in under everyone’s radar and sexually exploited her thirteen-year-old daughter.

Jennifer (not her real name) was eleven and a half when she first met “Charlie” online. She thought he was a few years older, and was intrigued about befriending a slightly older teenage boy. Jennifer was an honors student and had already been taking advanced college courses while still in middle school. She lived in a loving and warm household with her mother and father. She also had siblings and half siblings from her father’s previous marriage. They were all close.

Jennifer’s mother, Sharry (also not her real name), talked to Jennifer about her online friend, Charlie. She insisted on talking to Charlie himself, by phone, once he and Jennifer had started calling each other. He passed the phone call test, and Sharry was convinced that he really was the teenage boy he professed to be. Either he had manipulated his voice to sound younger or he had a younger person make the call. Charlie even called and spoke to Jennifer’s brothers, talking about when he would be their brother-in-law someday, after he and Jennifer were married. He pleaded with Jennifer to come and visit him in Utah. Sharry invited him to visit them instead. But Charlie always had a reason he couldn’t come.

As things progressed, Sharry insisted on talking to Charlie’s mother. He first avoided it by saying she was sick, later that her sickness had become cancer, and that eventually she died from the cancer. The family fell for this, hook, line, and sinker. Most caring families would. Although the “relationship” progressed for almost two years, it remained relatively tame. Charlie was romantic rather than predatorial, and he sent her expensive gifts, including a Polaroid camera. (Remember the Polaroid camera Paul Brown sent?)

Jennifer was inexperienced with boys and dating, and Charlie seemed to know not to push her too fast. But about a year and a half after they met online, Charlie sent her sexually explicit photos of himself from the neck down. She became very uncomfortable and pulled back. But several tragedies occurred around the same time, which made Jennifer easier prey. Her father was hospitalized with a serious illness, and her sixteen-year-old half brother died of a brain hemorrhage.

Charlie, like all good predators, knew when to strike. He told Jennifer that she owed him sexually explicit photos of herself, since he had sent those of himself. When she refused, he told her that she would be left alone, since her family was dying or would die—and he threatened to leave her. Reluctantly, after fighting against it as hard as she could, she acquiesced and sent him sexually explicit photos of herself.

When Sharry was cleaning Jennifer’s room, she discovered a letter in which Charlie had set forth the sexual poses he wanted Jennifer to photograph. Sharry sent him a letter, confronting him. She said that he didn’t sound like a teenager in the letter. She told him that if he ever contacted her daughter again, she would inform the police. He never replied, and Jennifer was not permitted to use the Internet for months.

One day, just when Jennifer and Sharry thought that the whole episode was past them, the phone rang. It was a detective from Utah, who informed Sharry that Jennifer’s photos had been discovered in Hatch’s day planner by a coworker. He wasn’t sixteen—he was thirty-six. He was a former teacher who had been dismissed by the school after having been accused by a student of sexual abuse. (The school hadn’t taken any other action.) He was currently employed by the welfare office in Utah, and was married with children and step-children.

Six months later, Charles Hatch was convicted of sexual exploitation in a Utah federal court. He began his six-and-a-half year sentence in early June 1999. As a condition of his plea, he will not be permitted to use the Internet. This mother has become a dear friend of mine, after seeking WiredSafety’ help in getting through the prosecution of this case. She is a wonderful and warm mother, and her daughter is an inspiration to us all. What this tells us is that some cyberpredators (known as “travelers” to law enforcement) seek out the good kids, the smart ones, the ones who are not street-smart and are from sheltered suburban or rural families. Many of our children match that profile perfectly.