ANSONIA — A 36-year-old Naugatuck man asked an online decoy he thought was a 13-year-old girl whether she was willing to lose her virginity to him, one of the conversations that launched a child sex abuse material investigation, according to an arrest warrant released Wednesday.
Roger Pratt was arrested May 15 and charged with first-degree possession of child sex abuse material, Ansonia police said.
Pratt had responded in February to a Facebook profile of a young girl named “Heidi,” and set up an in-person meeting with her after sending a photo of his genitals and asking sex-related questions, the warrant says.
But Heidi didn’t show up, because she didn’t actually exist, according to police. Instead, Pratt met a representative of Predator Poachers of Long Island, a group that targets adults who prey on minors, police said. The group created Heidi’s fake profile.
A representative from the group confronted Pratt at the Ansonia muffler shop where he works on March 27, videotaped the conversation and called police.
While the person talked to Pratt, the video shows, an Ansonia police officer pulled into the parking lot and approached them. The group representative asked Pratt in front of the officer to declare that he is not going to send photos of his genitals to young girls and is not going to look at child pornography anymore, the video showed, according to the warrant. Pratt responded that he will not. “I’m done,” he said in the recorded video, the warrant said.
The person then explained to the officer how the group set up a decoy and said he would share all messages and material the vigilante group had collected with police, the video shows. Police cited the material in the warrant.
Pratt first contacted the decoy, whose Facebook profile name was “Cindy Pizza Baby,” on Feb. 19, the warrant says. The conversations, on Pratt’s part, grew increasingly sexual up to the arranged in-person meeting in late March, when the decoy wrote that her mother would be out of town, the warrant says.
Pratt admitted to police that he had been messaging a person he thought was a young girl and that he had been collecting child sex abuse material, the warrant says.
“Pratt explained that he has not been the same since his father died less than a year ago and he started finding child pornography,” the warrant says.
An officer who responded to the muffler shop asked Pratt whether there was any child porn on his phone, and Pratt admitted he had about 50 images and videos on his phone, the warrant says. He agreed to allow a search of his phone, police said.
The search uncovered 105 videos of child sex abuse material, featuring adult males sexually assaulting girls as young as 3 years old, and 96 images of child sex abuse material featuring girls as young as 2 years old, the warrant says.
Pratt posted a $75,000 bond and is to appear at state Superior Court in Milford May 29, according to court records.
