It can’t happen here, people say. Guess what? It can and almost did. A fortuitous set of circumstances may have prevented a 14-year-old Freehold Township girl from leaving New Jersey with a man she had met in an Internet chat room.
Their computer relationship brought the man from Oklahoma to Freehold Township on the evening of Nov. 25, but the two never met, although the visitor from the Midwest was arrested.
A Freehold Township police detective said he believes this to be the first case of this type in the community. However, given the advance of technology and the inability or unwillingness of parents to monitor their children’s computer use, Detective Marty Boutote said he doesn’t believe it will be the last.
The events that culminated on the night of Nov. 25 began in May or June, Boutote said, when a 13-year-old girl in Freehold Township made the acquaintance of a 19-year-old man in Okla-homa through an Internet chat room.
The chat rooms allow for real-time communication among two or more individuals.
Over the next few months, Boutote said, the two communicated for hours at a time on the computer.
"The girl was 13 when they met and has since turned 14," the detective said. "They discussed many things, and at some point she apparently told the young man she wanted to leave her home in Freehold Township. She invited him to pick her up, but their timing was off, and she was unable to meet him."
The events of the evening on which the young man and the girl were supposed to meet began taking shape at about 8:54 p.m. Nov. 25, when the girl’s father called Freehold Township police to report that his daughter had run away from her home in a neighborhood near Freehold Township High School.
Freehold Township police and officers from the Monmouth County Sheriff’s Department responded to the neighborhood near Buck and Doe drives with tracking dogs and began their search for the girl.
At about 9:05 p.m., a taxi pulled up near a patrol car that was parked on Buck Drive. The driver reported that the man in the back seat could not pay the $70 fare from Trenton.
With that information, police launched a separate investigation and learned that the man in the cab, Samuel C. Snyder, 19, of Muskogee, Ok., had taken a bus from Tulsa to New Jersey to rendezvous with the Freehold Town-ship teen-ager, Boutote said. Snyder was arrested and charged with theft of services (for failing to pay for the cab ride) and placed in the Monmouth County jail, Waterworks Road, in default of $2,500 bail.
The case against Snyder for theft of services was resolved on Nov. 28 when he appeared in Freehold Township municipal court, pleaded guilty, was put on a payment schedule and released, Boutote said. He was taken to a bus station and put on a bus back to Oklahoma.
"Mr. Snyder realized he was probably doing something wrong by coming to New Jersey," Boutote said, "but at this stage there was no threatening behavior and no indication that he would have hurt the girl. It was a mutually agreed upon discussion between the two parties and there was no coercion. I conferred with the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office on this case, and although we looked hard, there was no criminal statute under which we could charge Mr. Snyder, although he was right on the border of something criminal."
Boutote said investigators were given access to the girl’s computer and were able to review many of the discussions she had with the young man over a period of about seven months.
"There was nothing to indicate that anything of a sexual nature was discussed," Boutote said. "There was nothing illicit. There was nothing to indicate there was anything other than normal chatting between two people. Right now the girl is with her father and mother, and she will not be charged with anything. Hopefully, this has brought the family closer together."
The News Transcript contacted the girl’s parents, who said they did not wish to speak about the incident.
There is a lesson to be learned in all this, and Boutote was emphatic in delivering it to parents in Western Monmouth County.
"A parent should not allow a juvenile to sit in his or her bedroom chatting on the computer for hours without knowing who that juvenile is talking to," he said. "This should not be tolerated. Children think they know who they are talking to, but that person might not be the person the child believes him or her to be. In this case it turned out that the person the juvenile was chatting with was who he said he was, but that is not always the case. This type of incident can and does happen."
In a press release issued Monday, police officials said, "Freehold Township police are aware of the growing concerns parents have regarding the use of the Internet by their children. One of the primary concerns parents have is the use of chat rooms and the dangers associated with their use. Freehold Township police are currently developing an educational seminar for parents that will offer safety tips for proper and safe Internet use."