Authorities have advised parents to monitor their children’s social media activity after a missing Arizona 14-year-old girl was tracked down in the basement of the home of a convicted Utah sex offender.
“If you think traffic doesn’t happen here, think again,” the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office warned in a post Friday.
“Parents, always monitor your children’s social media activity and talk to them about the dangers of human trafficking. Our detectives are working cooperatively with Utah agencies to investigate where the initial incident occurred,” the office added.
The bureau said they were conducting investigations to determine where the initial incident occurred, adding that the teen was on juvenile probation and fitted with an ankle monitoring device that was key to police finding her, Fox News reported.
The disappearance of the minor was reported by her father on January 28. However, the girl reportedly left the night before.
According to court documents, the station noted that Jordan Sorenson, 26, began commenting on TikTok videos of the girl, and the conversation continued on Snapchat. Sorenson offered to send the girl food to her house and she gave him her address. The suspect would have driven more than eight hours to meet her.
“This whole case is very tragic and it is not something we want to see any of our children go through,” DeShae Fangmeyer, an assistant probation officer, told AZ Family on Thursday.
The deputy officer added that if the young woman had not had the monitoring device on her ankle, she would never have been found.
Sorenson’s arrest was made by officers with the Utah Department of Corrections Division of Probation and Adult Probation following an investigation coordinated by the Utah Attorney General’s human trafficking unit, the Utah Attorney General’s Office said. .
The girl, for her part, was turned over to the care of a victim advocate, attached to the Attorney General’s Office.
“It is a priority for our office to use our Safe Strike Force to help minors and prosecute the growing number of human traffickers out there. These crimes are becoming more frequent and we must all continue to work together to combat them.” crimes,” said Richard Piatt, director of communications for the office, in a statement.
Sorenson had just been convicted in June 2020 of a felony first-degree aggravated sexual extortion of an adult. He is on probation with AP&P and his name is on the Utah sex offender registry.
Sorenson was convicted in June 2020 of first degree felony aggravated sexual extortion of an adult. He is on probation with AP&P and is listed on the Utah sex offender registry.
With information from Fox News