GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — An online encounter between an 11-year-old girl and someone she thought was a boy interested in computer games took an unexpected turn when the “boy” threatened to “do bad stuff” if she didn’t send sexually explicit pictures, court records show.
The “boy” was actually a 29-year-old school security guard from New York, who used threats to coerce the girl to send the explicit photos, according federal court records. The girl, who lives in northern Michigan, “complied because she was scared,” a federal agent wrote.
On Wednesday, Ryan Romario Dookhan, the man investigators say was behind the threats, appeared in federal court in Grand Rapids on three counts of sexual exploitation of a child.
An indictment filed this week accuses him of directing the girl to take sexually explicit images of herself and send them to Dookhan. If convicted, he faces between 15 and 30 years in prison.
The New York man aided in his own arrest by providing the girl photos, including one of him wearing a distinctive polo shirt bearing the logo of Challenge Charter School, records show. It led investigators to a school in New York, where Dookhan worked as a security guard, records show.
Dookhan was arrested earlier this month at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.
A 9-page criminal complaint filed in western Michigan says the offenses happened in spring and summer of last year. Michigan State Police launched the investigation after the girl’s parents told them the 11-year-old had been engaging in sexual conversations and sending nude photos to men on Roblox and Justalk applications, records show.
The girl told authorities she met a guy on Roblox “who acted like he was her age,” records show. It started innocently enough, with the girl trading pet animals in an online game, records show. He directed her to download the Justalk app so they could talk.
“The first time she called Ryan, he said he would search for her house and take her from her parents if she didn’t show her vagina to him,” records show. “Ryan threatened to do bad stuff to her.”
She sent pictures “because she was scared,” and eventually revealed that she was 11 years old, records show.
“He is not deterred and continued to request” sexually explicit photos, an investigator wrote.
Police in August obtained search warrants, which helped lead them to Dookhan, who had a home address in the Queens, New York, neighborhood of Jamaica.
