28 Arrested in Florida Online Sex Sting

Law enforcement officials in Polk County Fla., arrested 28 men for soliciting sex with minors after setting up a weeklong sting operation in a suburban home where undercover officers communicated with the alleged predators over the Internet. Three of the 28 people who were arrested told authorities they worked for the Walt Disney Company, which owns and operates several theme parks in the Orlando area including Walt Disney World. Among the other arrested suspects were a volunteer for the Orlando Boys and Girls Club and a student at the University of Florida.

Those arrested ranged in age from 17 to 55. Each arrived at the suburban house apparently believing they were going to meet with an underage girl.

Instead, they were met by a house full of armed detectives working a sting led by the Orlando County Sheriff’s Department, which conducted its second operation in less than a year to target internet crimes against children.

The operation was concluded and the arrests announced late Sunday. The 28 people were booked into the Polk County Jail on a variety of sex-related charges.

“These deviants came to the undercover location to have sex with a child,” the Polk County sheriff, Grady Judd, said in a statement. “We stopped them.” “I don’t know any other way to say this,” he added. “We will not tolerate anyone preying on our children. We will not allow these criminals’ behavior to escalate to kidnapping or murder.”

The sheriff’s office said that, according to national statistics, 1 in 7 children say that they have received an online solicitation; 1 in 11 has received an aggressive online sexual solicitation; and 1 in 3 has been exposed to unwanted sexual images on line.

The elaborate sting operation involved about 50 officers from a variety of local, state and federal law-enforcement agencies, including the Rocky Mount Police Department in North Carolina and the Florida attorney general’s office.

In a week’s time, the detectives communicated with about 250 people from as far away as California and England.

A spokeswoman for Disney told The Associated Press that it is the company’s policy to take accusations of sexual misconduct by its employees seriously, and that if the accusations prove to be true, the company will take “appropriate action.”

The sheriff’s department allowed reporters and photographers from several news agencies to witness the sting operation, conducted at a house on a cul-de-sac that was staffed around the clock for a week.

A reporter for The Orlando Sentinel who was at the house described the officers’ operation as “fairly simple: Create a fake profile of a girl or boy, enter an Internet chat room and wait for a message.”

Some of those who contacted the fictitious girls and boys wanted to chat for a couple of days, the Sentinel said, while others got “straight to the point,” arranging to meet them for sex.

Those people were directed to the Orlando home.

A videotape of the scene, posted on the Sentinel’s web site, shows Jonathan K. Thompkins, a 19-year-old food preparation worker from nearby Melbourne, Fla., being arrested after he appeared at the house, apparently expecting to go skinny dipping with a 13-year-old girl.

When he was met by investigators at the front door instead, Mr. Thompkins is heard on the tape saying “I knew it.”

Mr. Thompkins told reporters that he went to the home with plans to meet with the girl and “just to go into the pool, and whatever happens, happens.”

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” he told them. “My mom raised me better.”

A spokeswoman for the sheriff’s department, Donna C. Wood, said it may conduct another such sting.

“He is making this a national call to arms,” Ms. Wood said of Sheriff Grady. “Knowing him, he will do another one sometime, but hopefully he’ll give our officers a break before then.”

Article posted by the New Yrk Times on April 2, 2007