CAMERON, Texas (FOX 44) — Following a year-long operation, a Michigan man was arrested over 1,000 miles away from home to allegedly meet a minor in Cameron, Texas.
For almost a year, 58-year-old Geevar Varghese was allegedly speaking with who he thought was a 14-year-old girl – but it was actually a 40-year-old man with a goal of getting him arrested. The man behind the girl was Robert Havens, the president of the Decoy Project, a nonprofit which works to get child predators arrested.
“I was in a full-on relationship with this man, emotional relationship, with this man for a year,” said Havens. “Christmas Day, I was texting him like my birthday, Valentine’s Day.”
Varghese was arrested by the Cameron Police department on August 29th in a sting operation coordinated in partnership with the Decoy Project. He is being held in the Milam County Jail and facing charges of Online Solicitation of a Minor, Sexual Conduct, and Child Grooming.
According to the Decoy Project, they have 357 days’ worth of evidence against Varghese, including messages, pictures, and more. Havens says the Decoy Project is not a vigilante group, and they want to make sure predators face proper legal justice.
“I feel like doing this the right way, not being vigilantes, like not meeting these guys up in parking lots and beating them up, not showing up to their work, you know, and then calling the cops, like going through the proper channels of law enforcement and getting these guys off the streets, I think that is being proactive,” said Havens.
In the year that Havens posed as a decoy with Varghese, he says it was emotionally straining.
“You’re in a relationship with a man who’s saying vile things and asking for vile things or admitting things that he’s done, and you kind of have to sit there and just like pretend that it doesn’t bother you,” said Havens. “Knowing there’s probably other victims out there either currently or in the past, you know, so that can be rough.”
The Decoy Project is a nonprofit and is entirely ran by volunteers. Havens himself is a special education teacher and football coach in Texas. He says ultimately, he hopes they can secure funding to make the Decoy Project a full-time endeavor and continue getting predators off of the streets.
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