Date Time
Argos arrestin Brisbane 12 March
A 20-year-old Mt Isa man has been charged with child sex offences following investigations by Argos and the Ferny Grove Child Protection and Investigation Unit.
The man was arrested this morning when he attended a Taringa fast food business to meet what he believed to be, a 15-year-old girl. He was instead met with detectives from Argos.
The investigation began on 11 January 2021 after a referral from Western Australia Police who received intelligence the man was engaged in inappropriate behaviour with underage females online.
The offender has made contact with an undercover officer from Argos posing as a 15-year-old child on a social media application, engaging in behaviour that will be alleged constitutes the grooming of a child.
News by Charles Miranda
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Subscriber only An 11-year-old boy was rescued by police in Austria last week, a couple of months earlier it was a five-year-old in Barcelona and before then, several children and a baby from an orphanage in Malaysia. But the Australian police unit whose investigations led to these offshore rescues say the most at risk of child abuse are right here in Australia, with multiple current undercover operations identifying an alarming rise in predators targeting our kids. And most of those children being groomed or abused are not necessarily from vulnerable homes and circumstances but rather middle class homes and right under the noses of their parents with one in four children online now talking to a stranger.