A 22-year-old Australian man is facing charges after being accused of travelling to Edmonton to have sex with a 13-year-old girl he met online, say investigators from the province’s Internet Child Exploitation unit and Australia’s New South Wales Police.
Investigators say a man met the girl over social media in October 2016 and the two regularly exchanged sexually explicit chats and photos.
The victim’s mother contacted Edmonton city police after discovering the online conversations just as he arrived in Canada, investigators said. The man was arrested in his Edmonton hotel room on Feb. 10.
The man’s home in Chatswood, a suburb of Sydney, Australia, was searched by the New South Wales police force on Feb. 21. Investigators seized a number of electronic devices that will now undergo forensic examination.
“The internet allows us to access the world from wherever we are, and while advantageous in so many areas of life, it also creates opportunities for online predators. The relationships we have with our law enforcement colleagues across the globe has never been more important for potential child victims,” said New South Wales police force sex crimes Det.-Supt. Linda Howlett prior to a Friday press conference in Edmonton.
Jiashu Weng, 22, is charged with luring a child under 14 years of age, possession of child pornography and distributing child pornography.
Another Australian man, Aaron Voon, pleaded guilty to nine child porn offences in December after he was caught video recording a young boy using a urinal in a bathroom at West Edmonton Mall in May. Australian police say they found 409 images of children — categorized as Category 1 child exploitation — and 12 videos of young boys surreptitiously recorded while they were urinating in public washrooms after a search of Voon’s home in Perth.
Voon was a child psychologist.
Anyone with information about this or any other child exploitation offence is urged to contact local police.
