Men arrested in Johnson County online child sex sting have variety of occupations, ages

The 16 men are from various walks of life — from attorney to homeless shelter operator, from ages 21 to 67 and from a dozen communities across North Texas.

But they have at least two things in common, authorities said Monday morning.

They came to Johnson County to meet for sex after chatting online with people they thought were children.

And they got busted for it.

Each man was jailed on suspicion of online solicitation of a minor, a second-degree felony, after they turned up at one of three “take-down” sites, officials said. By Monday morning, 10 of the 16 had been released from the Johnson County Jail after posting bond. Nine had bail set at $20,000; one had bail set at $30,000.

The crime is punishable by two to 20 years in prison.

“Online predators are a scourge on our society,” said David Maxwell, law enforcement director for the Texas attorney general’s office, which coordinated the multiagency operation. “We do these operations around the state, and I’m happy to say this is the most successful operation that we have ever done in our history.”

He spoke at a news conference to give more details about the arrests, which were made public Thursday.

It wasn’t the first sting for one defendant, who is listed on the city’s sex offender registry. Another brought a gun, and two brought drugs — marijuana and methamphetamine.

“It’s a good day for law enforcement. We caught a lot of people on this particular sting — I think more than any of us anticipated,” said Johnson County District Attorney Dale Hanna. “We’ll see how Johnson County juries react to people coming to Johnson County for the purpose of having sexual relations with 14-year-old children.”

The sting was conducted by the attorney general’s office, the Johnson County Sheriff’s Department, the Cleburne and Burleson police departments and Johnson County’s Stop The Offender Program (STOP) Special Crimes Unit.

Local officials said they learned so much that the next sting might well be launched with no state supervision.

“It was a real, live operation, but it was also training for our local officers,” said Cmdr. Adam King of the STOP unit. “This will not be a one-time operation. This is the type of investigation that we now have the ability to do on our own here on a local level.”

Cleburne police Lt. Shane Wickson welcomed the on-the-job training.

“They came with their expertise and taught us how to make good cases,” he said.

About 20 law enforcement officers visited online chat rooms four days last week to troll for predators.

Alternating between their 14- to 15-year-old boy and girl characters, the officers received a quick and unnerving welcome from the chat rooms.

“It was sobering,” said Cleburne police Cpl. Bryan Proctor, a father of three. “As a parent, I can tell you I’ve been through a lot of things, especially in my almost 15 years in law enforcement, and I’ve never seen the kind of depravity that I saw within the first two minutes of beginning the chats.”

Officials said those suspects who were nibbling on the hook were given every opportunity to turn away. The sting snared only the most determined, who drove from as far north as Denton and as far south as Eddy, between Waco and Temple.

“These people were out actively looking,” King said, adding that he couldn’t give details of the chat rooms and conversations. “These weren’t [people] that we approached; these were [people] that were taking active measures going out on the Internet looking for children. We let them basically find us.”

Although King agreed that the sting was a success, he offered a different definition.

“The true measure of a successful operation would have been that we caught none of these people, because there would have been nobody online soliciting who they thought were children for sex,” he said. “That would have been a good day. But we just have to take comfort in the fact that we got 16 of these people off the streets.”

Proctor works in Cleburne’s sex offender compliance unit, which manages the department’s sex offender registry. The publicly posted list now contains about 50 offenders, he said.

He’s not sure how much of an impact the sting made. In the four-day investigation, he received more than 2,000 messages from chat room prowlers.

“Everybody talks about the tip of the iceberg,” Proctor said. “When I started this, I realized we weren’t talking about the tip of the iceberg. We’re talking about snowflakes on the top of the tip of the iceberg.”

For tips on guarding against online predators, visit the Texas attorney general’s cyber safety website.

This story was originally published July 20, 2015 at 2:08 PM with the headline "Men arrested in Johnson County online child sex sting have variety of occupations, ages."