A news report from Osceola County, Florida states that 40 men were arrested and charged with trying to solicit sex with a child via the Internet during “Operation Red Cheeks.” The men range in age from 18 to a man who will be 71 next month. Child rape is acceptable evidently by teenagers still in high school and those old enough to be a grandfather to the child they hoped to abuse and exploit.
With the click of their computer mouse, these men sent messages – and sometimes pornographic images – to people they thought were children or, even more astounding, parents or guardians of children, to arrange a place to meet and have sex with a child. The recipients were actually undercover detectives who deserve a lot of praise for being able to stomach doing a job like that. Imagine chatting online with scum like those arrested.
So, who are the arrestees? Are they society’s dregs? Sadly, they could be your neighbor.
The arrested include a high school student, several college students, sales representatives, construction workers, a soldier, quite a few unemployed people, an “areole technician” (seems like a suspect answer to the question of what their occupation is and further proof of their degenerate behavior), a retired bee keeper (anyone else thinking of justice for him and the rest of these men involving an angry swarm of bees?), a plant manager, a personal trainer, a warehouse clerk, a dispatcher, a wholesale dealer, an engineer, an eighth grade teacher, a vendor, a manager, a Public Works employee, a truck loader, a consultant, an information technology worker (you think this one might have been smart enough not to get caught), a professional golfer, and a swim coach.
Think about their professions, and then think about how many of them you or your child might encounter each day.
Take a look at their pictures. You could walk by them on the street, and you probably wouldn’t look twice. They don’t look like monsters, but they are.