A registered sex offender was sentenced to two decades in prison after engaging in sexually explicit chats and exchanging photos with a 12-year-old and a 13-year old girl.
Franklin DeCapua, who was living in Rochester, New York, found the girls in Nebraska by using a popular social networking app called Whoshere on his iPhone.
The girls, who are neighbors, were using it on the iPod Touch. The trio sent each other sexy pics and chatted about meeting for a sexual encounter. DeCapua was arrested before the planned meet-up.
DeCapua, 35, is a registered sex offender who pleaded guilty to the charges. U.S. District Judge Charles Siragusa, who called DeCapua a “sexual predator,” sentenced him to 20 years in federal prison with lifetime parole supervision.
Whoshere, offered gratis in iTunes since 2008, was rated suitable for users age 12+ for “mild or infrequent mature or suggestive themes.” Now boasting some two million users, developers MyRete call it “ideal for making new friends, dating and networking or just chatting and swapping pictures.”
Users can set searches to trawl for people based on dating, friends, casual relationships, gender, age, etc., then enjoy unlimited and “no-fee text messaging and send and receive pictures with other users.”
Social networking-cum-hook-up opps like Grindr have been in the news in sex assault cases involving minors, but this is the longest sentence we’ve seen connected to an app.
DeCapua’s “rich criminal history” was documented in a court filing from Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Gestring. His rap sheet includes sexual contact with a 12-year-old girl in 2001, a 2008 conviction for endangering the welfare of a child and pending charges for “sexual abuse and endangering the welfare of a child related to sexual contact with yet another minor child.”
