Arrest in Fayetteville

Mike Masterson
Posted on Sunday, February 5, 2006

Parents, grandparents and all who
care about the welfare of kids
should clip and read this column to their children who spend unsupervised time on computers. Innocent, impressionable young minds can provide easy prey for adult Internet wolves and their keyboards. First allow me to issue a heartfelt disclaimer : The person I’m about to tell you about stands accused by authorities only because they say they have probable cause to believe that he committed the offense. He remains innocent until proved guilty. Fayetteville police last week arrested a 46-year-old man they say apparently believed that the undercover male cop he’d been communicating with over the Internet was a 13-year-old girl. According to the arrest report, the online chats involved sexual conversation. It alleges that Donald Ray Wadsworth of Fayetteville enticed the supposed “victim” to engage in sexually explicit behavior. An extensive news story by reporter Trish Hollenbeck of the Northwest Arkansas Times said Wadsworth was arrested at a city park, where a policeman who’d been posing as a young girl in an Internet chat room was waiting for him. Wadsworth is accused of violating state law by possessing computer child pornography. The cyberspace trot line of sorts was being run by Sgt. Bill Phelan and Detective Corey Roberts during online exchanges that began in mid-November while the two officers were attending a conference on Internet crimes against kids. Phelan said police did not make the initial contact with the suspect, but reacted to his postings inside a chat room. If so, to his credit, Roberts sure had to know his stuff to convincingly impersonate a 13-year-old female.
Phelan told me, and the arrest report contends, that Wadsworth had in the past showed up to physically meet with a “minor victim” with whom he had chatted via computer and threatened that he’d like to “kill an unidentified female” because he believed she’d lied to him.
The news account and the police report bore other ominous undertones. Cops said that during the arrest they discovered a rope, a knife, binoculars and several maps inside Wadsworth’s vehicle.
In light of the fact that police reported that Wadsworth was convicted on similar charges in Missouri—seven counts of enticing a child or attempting to entice a child—and was free on a $ 25, 000 appeal bond when he was arrested in Fayetteville, I have this nagging doubt that he was planning a scenic climbing getaway to the Buffalo River.
The state’s child pornography law seems plenty clear to this Harrison boy. It says that anyone who “knowingly utilizes a computer online service, Internet service or local bulletin board service to seduce, solicit, lure or entice or attempt to seduce, solicit, lure or entice a child or another individual believed by the person to be a child, to engage in sexually explicit conduct” is wading into deep ca-ca. The police report said the evidence against Wadsworth includes online chats, surveillance photographs and a taped statement. His arraignment is set for Feb. 27. Now police are asking anyone else who may have communicated over the computer with Wadsworth, better known in cyberspace as mywakinglife _ 479, to let them know. Detective Mike Parks told reporter Hollenbeck that he’s interested in what Wadsworth might have said to others online and when he said it. Phelan told me that Fayetteville authorities are seeking a grant to fund a fulltime officer who would focus on catching those who solicit children online. Sounds like a worthwhile grant for every police department to seek. Fort Smith police officers, who have experience with similar computer crimes, were a help to Fayetteville officers in working their first Internet-related case. Meanwhile, let this be a lesson to all parents, who know they should pay closer attention but too often don’t. It can matter a great deal who is infiltrating your child’s mind and what that person is after. You also might be interested, as I was, to visit a Web site, familywatchdog. us, which can show you by map which registered sex offenders and known convicted felons are living where in your neighborhood. Oh, and don’t forget. Wadsworth is only charged with a crime and is innocent until he’s proved guilty. I’ll let you know whichever way it turns out.
—–––––•–––––—Staff columnist Mike Masterson is the former editor of three Arkansas daily newspapers.