Cameron James Terry, a 23-year-old resident of Charles Place in Flagler Beach, faces two felony charges of online soliciting of an adolescent and unlawfully using a two-way communication device after allegedly admitting to having solicited a 14-year-old girl on Snapchat.
Terry was booked at the Flagler County jail on Wednesday and released on $60,000 bond.
The incident dates back to last June, when a woman who had known Terry from school–they both attended Flagler County schools–contacted the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office to report that Terry was behaving inappropriately toward her 20-year-old sister, and that he was sending explicit messages to a 14-year-old girl.
The 20-year-old was “hesitant to speak with law enforcement and nervous about the matter overall,” according to Terry’s arrest report, but eventually cooperated and identified the younger girl. The 20-year-old and the younger girl had been playing online poker when Terry joined the game and started making comments about the 14-year-old’s voice.
Days later, the 20-year-old said he had started stalking her, and when the younger girl sought to confront him about it, Terry turned his attention toward her. He sent her several explicit messages, making graphic comments and asking equally graphic questions of the girl, her history, and what he intended to do to and with her. One of the tamer messages law enforcement recovered was: “I wish I had you alone so we could feel one another and cuddle and touch and please each other and do whatever we wanted.”
Other messages were more step-by-step descriptions of his intentions. He was not suggesting a movie, a walk in the park or a meal at Chipotle. He portrayed himself as concerned about not wanting to hurt her and assured her repeatedly what a gentle guy he is before his language borrowed from the scripts of garden-variety porn with the odd choking suggestion thrown in. He was aware she was 14, as the girl told him so several times.
When deputies showed him images of some of the Snapchat exchanges, he confirmed they were his, and said the adolescent had “wanted” him to be suggestive. There appears not to have been physical contact between the two. (Brief contact between Terry and the 20-year-old woman is not part of the case, nor was it criminal so much as presumptuous in nature.)
The third-degree felonies are each punishable by up to five years in prison, though given the evidence, a plea to reduced or altered charges is possible as Terry, if found guilty, would be a first-time offender. His defense will likely focus on avoiding a felony conviction and a sex-offender designation, both of which would otherwise follow him the rest of his life.
“Our Cyber Crimes/ICAC Unit works hard with the INTERCEPT Task Force to investigate these cases,” Flagler County Sheriff Rick Staly was quoted as saying in a release. Northeast Florida Intercept is a regional task force involving county and state law enforcement agencies focused on combating child exploitation and human trafficking. The Sheriff’s Office joined the task force last April.
“I commend the team on this investigation, and I also want to thank the third-party caller who was looking out for the victim and reported this activity on the victim’s behalf once they learned about it,” the sheriff said. “I also thank the suspect’s father for having his son turn himself in. That’s a hard decision for a parent, but the father did the right thing.”
Greg says
Guys, LEAVE THE KIDS ALONE!