Worcester County Sheriff's Office

The Sheriffs Office today released a press release on a year long investigation resulting in numerous arrests that targeted solicitation of minors. Unfortunately they are among our residents and our job is to protect our children. Sheriff Mason and staff will continue to go after these individuals and remove them for our streets. The below article is courtesy of the Daily Times along with photos. Please pay attention to what your children look at on the internet and do not let them share photos. We will be posting some helpful links for parents that can discourage file sharing and protect your children's data and information from being obtained. We live in a different world now and every step needs to be taken to protect our children. The Sheriff's Office would also like to thank our many partners in Law Enforcement who assisted in this operation.

Authorities in Worcester County announced Thursday that they've spent the last year catching would-be sexual predators by pretending to be vulnerable teenagers over the Internet.

The Worcester County Sheriff's Office said Operation Worcester Safety Net culminated in charging 18 alleged sexual predators, many of whom showed up in Worcester County for the sole purpose of engaging in sexual contact with minors. Other suspects were found to have computers filled with videos and images of child pornography, or were participating in peer-to-peer sharing and downloading of such material.

"What we found was a terrible presence online, for people who were willing to prey upon our children," said Lt. Mike McDermott. "Fortunately, they were preying on somebody that was not a child. They were trying to prey on a police officer posing as a child. The idea is to catch those that are willing to do that. But none of these guys, it was their first time, and I think that's terrifying for all of us."

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