The 13-year-old girl, who lives in Pennsylvania, believed she was meeting a 17-year-old boy named Jake who authorities say was really Zachary Lee McCauley, 29, according to a story by The Blaze.
Tori Hirsch, legal counsel with the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, calls that a “horrible situation” but one National Center is learning about more and more often.
“I want to say it's almost every day I hear a story of sexual extortion or 'sextortion,’ which is exactly what the facts in this story describe,” she tells AFN.
Authorities allege McCauley met the teen on Snapchat, the popular messaging app, but her mother became suspicious when she walked into her daughter’s bedroom and caught her taking suggestive photos and videos of herself.
The mother took her daughter's phone and computers to the Buckingham Township Police where they would begin to track down McCauley.
By then, however, the adult groomer had ordered the teenager to create a profile on the Grindr dating app, authorities allege. Two men were arrested for sexually assaulting the teen.
Hirsch says that is a textbook case of a sextortion-turned-sex trafficking situation, but his advice for parents is not to blame a naïve child who was tricked by a clever, evil person.
“Keep in mind predators are very, very tech-savvy,” she says. “They know how to use language of kids, and they know how to really disguise themselves.”
