A father posed as his 11-year-old daughter in order to meet with a 29-year-old sexual predator who was messaging with the minor on the her cell phone.
When Walter Rodríguez of Buenos Aires, Argentina, discovered that a 29-year-old man was sending inappropriate texts to his 11-year-old daughter through WhatsApp, he took over the conversation.
Rodríguez’s daughter told her mother who told her father that some guy online was trying to arrange a meeting with her through the online messaging application, and that the man was telling her to lie to her parents about where she was going. Rodríguez quickly realized that the man was “grooming” his daughter.
The man asked for revealing pictures of the 11-year-old girl, and sent sexually explicit messages.
Rodríguez responded as if he were his daughter and set up a “date” with the man.
“First he wanted to have the date at his house,” Rodríguez said on Channel TB, El País reported. “I told him, ‘Yes, of course,’ because I was going to kill him. He would open the door and I would kill him.”
The predator, later identified as Germán Acosta, changed the meeting site to a public place, a street in the Villa Crespo neighborhood. Rodríguez, still pretending to be his daughter, agreed.
When the two men met, Rodríguez immediately punched Acosta right in the face and beat him multiple times. Rodríguez then called the police.
While waiting for the police, Rodríguez took photos of Acosta’s now-bloody face and posted them online along with screenshots of the WhatsApp chat with his daughter.
The online response was overwhelmingly.
Facebook user Huguito Pelado Valero commented on Rodríguez’s photo, “Dear Walter, I do not know you, and maybe I’ll never see you face to face, but after what you did for your daughter, you’re my brother. Thank you, on behalf of all the good parents and in my case grandfather of granddaughters.”
Felipe Beltran also commented on the photo: “My brother I have a daughter also and from here in the United States I thank you and I congratulate you for having the tenacity and the courage to do that for your daughter and your family, as a father I thank you I do not know you but after what you did you are my brother.”
The police charged both men, Rodríguez with battery and Acosta with online harassment and grooming—the crime of befriending children for the purpose of sexually abusing them later.
According to Argentinian law, anyone involved in phone or online grooming of a minor faces a prison sentence of between six months and four years.
But to Rodríguez’s disappointment, Acosta was let go.
“I made my statement before Justice. I told them everything, how it happened, I showed them the screenshots, what he had been sending to my little girl,” Rodríguez said, according to El País. “I don’t understand why they let him go. A person like this doesn’t deserve to be free.”
Hernan Navarro, with the nonprofit group Grooming Argentina, called Acosta “a potential risk to society,” El País reports.
Grooming Argentina is dedicated to protecting children online and making sure their parents realize that just because their children are sitting in the same room, they are not necessarily safe.
“Parents think that because their children are by their sides they are safe by their side. But kids are alone on the internet,” he told El País.
Recommended Video:
