33-year-old Victor Alfonso Vasquez of Carthage, Missouri is a registered sex offender who had prior convictions for statutory rape. Just a few months after his release from state prison, Vasquez went on to offend again.
Vasquez met a 13-year-old girl over a mobile game that the girl played on her phone. Unfortunately, I was unable to find out what game it was. Since I don’t play many mobile games I couldn’t even hazard an educated guess at this point.
Anyway, Vasquez continued to communicate with the girl over Facebook Messenger and would send explicit images over Snapchat. The pair had a ‘relationship’ (child rape) with Vasquez even talking the girl into having her mom drop her off at Vasquez’s home.
When the girl was 14 she became pregnant by Vasquez.
Last year, Vasquez pleaded guilty to the sexual exploitation of a child. Late last month, Vasquez was sentenced to 33 years and 9 months in federal prison without parole. Maybe if he had been kept in prison longer the first time this wouldn’t have been an issue. Also, this is more evidence that sex offender registries do little to keep them from offending again.
If your kids play online games whether it’s on mobile, console, or PC, check to see if the game has messaging or chat features and check for options on how to limit them. Some games have these features and some don’t.
And as always, do a routine check to see who is on the friends lists of their social media accounts. You may trust your kids, but you can’t trust every predator that lurks online.
Real Crime with Trench Reynolds 