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MAN WHO SEXUALLY ENTICED PRE-TEENS ON FACEBOOK IS GIVEN 20 YEARS BY MONTGOMERY COUNTY JURY

Thanks to the persistence of an East Montgomery County mom, and the determination of members of the Montgomery County Precinct 4 Constable’s Office, a child predator with multiple known victims is headed to prison. Not only have they saved the children he was pursuing and victimizing through social media, but his young daughter’s 2008 outcry of sexual abuse has also been reexamined resulting in an indictment.

An in-depth multi-agency investigation led by Montgomery County Precinct 4 Capt. Mark Seals and Sgt. Art Looza produced damning evidence sent to preteen girls he befriended through Facebook, including not only messages that were sexual in nature, but also webcam video of  Duane Charles Parker of Lafayette Louisiana, who was 49-years-old at the time, masturbating while discussing what he would like to do to his victims including saying he would make them videos masturbating while screaming out their names.

Precinct 4 Constable Kenneth “Rowdy” Hayden, who at one point had five men working on the investigation, said Parker was every parent’s nightmare.

“He’s the person you warn your kids about, and the reason we have to teach our children not to talk to strangers in person or online, even if they seem nice.” Constable Hayden said. “At over 50 years old, Mr. Parker managed to befriend well over a dozen little girls without their parents’ knowledge with the intention of using them for his own twisted sexual gratification.”

A Galveston County grand jury returned an indictment on the third and most serious charge, which was the result of a CPS investigation launched after Parker’s then 6-year-old daughter claimed he was sexually abusing her. That complaint was filed in 2008 by the child’s then 24-year-old mother. Records indicate the girl was born when the mother was 17 and Parker was 39. That was later dismissed.

With no action taken in the case, the couple split up but Parker retained parental rights to the then  10-year-old girl, who was with him at the time of his August 13, 2012 arrest. That child’s mother has a 6-year-old daughter by a different father and the 6-year-old was also with Parker when he was arrested. The mother lives in Kingwood, but the girls had been with Parker in Lafayette. His business, “1-800-CRAWFISH” or “Crawfish Unlimited” involves frequent trips between south Louisiana and southeast Texas.

Parker lived in Texas in 2008 when his daughter’s mother contacted Child Protective Services. He was charged with  Indecent Exposure in Galveston in 2010 after exposing his penis to a 17-year-old Starbucks employee as he sat in his vehicle at a drive-thru window. In a plea agreement that was reduced to disorderly conduct. It is unclear exactly when Parker moved to Lafayette because he kept his Texas Driver’s License, which has the address of what is now a parking lot and was once a UPS store where he rented a mailbox.

“Every address connected with Duane Charles Parker was bogus,” Capt. Seals said.

The East Montgomery County mom who first alerted authorities, and whose identity is withheld to protect her family’s privacy, began noticing comments by an unfamiliar name on her daughter’s Facebook page. The person posting as “Parker Duane” was using a photo of a sports car as a profile picture, and listed no date of birth. The mom said her daughter, who had just turned 12 at the , accepted Parker’s friendship because they had several mutual friends, and all of them were schoolmates. It is unknown how Parker found and first connected with the circle of female friends (17 at last count), all of whom are now in the seventh grade. At first, the girl and her mother assumed with so many mutual friends, some of them must have known “Parker Duane” personally.

Parker began clicking “like” on the girl’s Facebook posts and when they frequently posted photos of themselves, as young girls do, Parker posted comments like “beautiful,” “I’m in love” and “XOX” using hearts and other flirtatious words and symbols typically used by preteens on one another’s pages. He also sent instant and private messages that became progressively inappropriate and the mom took control of her daughter’s account. Parker quickly confirmed the mother’s suspicions when he sent her daughter a lengthy private message that began, “Hey Beautiful, omg ur so Beautiful ur a dream ur someone id love to be mine…” The message continued with Parker rambling, at one point writing, “I know I may scar(e) u but I’m safe loving and could only love you…” He also discussed wishing he were in her room lying on her bed, with her on top of him. The message was followed by a video that showed the trunk section of an adult male (now known to be Parker) in bikini underwear, exposing his genitals and masturbating.

Around the same time, the mother of another 12-year-old girl in the group contacted the reportee mom, saying “Parker Duane” was also sending sexual messages and pornographic video to her daughter and she had proof he was a grown man. Signed onto her daughter’s Facebook account, that mother searched through his page history and finally found a shirtless photo he posted of himself, sitting on a black leather sofa and making a peace sign. Comparing the photo to Parker when he was arrested, it appears to be around 20 years old, which would still make him around 30 when the photo was taken

The reportee mom contacted law enforcement, but “Parker Duane’s” account was deleted.

Capt. Seals said his agency contacted the Harris County Precinct 4 Constable’s Office Internet Crimes Against Children, or ICAC division because they had a lot of experience with child predators who used the internet.

All involved believed the unidentified predator had become paranoid and would probably move on to another group, using a different name. They were partially right. It was not long before Parker returned to Facebook using the name “Johnny Pepper,” and contacting the girls in the same ways as before. This time, however, law enforcement was on the receiving end of his messages and videos. They obtained permission from the mothers of both girls to take control of their Facebook accounts and continued communicating with Parker as though they were the girls.

Investigators were able to identify and ultimately apprehend Parker through his business on August 13, 2012 at a restaurant on I-45 in Webster where he arrived to deliver an order. Child Protective Services took custody of Parker’s daughter and her half-sister upon his arrest and both were interviewed.

The unearthing of the 2008 case regarding Parker’s daughter has ignited a firestorm of controversy in Galveston County, with officials trying to explain why the case was not pursued for four years, leaving Parker with the right to be alone with a child who claimed he sexually assaulted her.

“The case fell through the cracks,” Maj. Ray Tuttoilmondo with the Galveston County Sheriff’s Office said at the time. “Shortly after the case, Hurricane Ike hit and there were a number of services that involved things on the island that included the criminal justice system that kind of went through some delays because of the storm.”

“I’m not trying to use that as an excuse,” he said, “But is that what caused this particular case to fall through the cracks? We don’t know.”

“Things have changed since four years ago,” Tuttoilmondo said in 2012,  “There’s better communication with the prosecutors – better communication with the district attorney’s office as a whole.”

“This is an unfortunate set of circumstances, and it certainly gives us pause to take a look at the entirety of the system so that we don’t have something like this happen again,” he said. “We need to figure out what happened with it first.”

District Attorney Jack Roady was not in the office in 2008, and he and Tuttoilmondo agree that communication between the agencies has improved since then.

“When it became clear that there was still an unresolved investigation from 2008, our first priority was to get the evidence presented to the grand jury, a Galveston County grand jury heard that evidence and indicted Parker for the offense of aggravated sexual assault of a child.” The case was later dismissed by a Galveston Jury after it was found much of the forensic evidence was lost to Hurricane Ike.

Montgomery County officials had no comment on the controversy connected with the handling of the 2008 case in Galveston County.

Constable Hayden said the Galveston County agencies involved in the Montgomery County Precinct 4 investigation and arrest had been more than helpful and cooperative and his agency was very appreciative.

Captain Seals said were four years ago if it had not been for the assistance of the Galveston County Precinct 8 Constable’s Office and the Friendswood Police Department, they might still be searching for Duane Parker. They also received assistance from Erin Smith and Morgan Dossey, of the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office.

Precinct 4 contacted the FBI a couple of days before Parker’s arrest, and Sue Barrow from the FBI’s Conroe office was instrumental in getting Precinct 4 connected with the Louisiana State Police. On August 14, 2012, the Louisiana State Police secured and then initiated a search warrant at Parker’s Lafayette residence, removing evidence including multiple computers which were forensically analyzed. From that the filed charges are still pending on possession of child pornography.

It took several years and several indictments to get Parker in front of a Montgomery County Jury. One set back was when a Supreme Court ruled that if someone sent pornography to a child it was a form of Freedom of Speech.  The other was the fact Parker fired three attorney’s and even tried to represent himself. Parker was finally indicted in 2015 on the charge of criminal attempt/ attempted sexual performance by a child. This followed his 2013 indictment of online solicitation of a minor under 14.

A jury was picked Monday in the Montgomery County 221st District Court with Judge Lisa Michalk presiding. The then 12-year-old girl’s mother took the stand first. She was asked by the defense attorney’s if the mother knew that she could have deleted Parker on Facebook. She then stated, “ so you just didn’t delete him so you could turn him in.” She described how she came upon the information on her daughter’s computer and how she responded.

The mother was followed by her now 15-year-old daughter who jurors could tell was uncomfortable on the stand as Parker kept smiling at her through her testimony.

Captain Seals spend over 7 hours on the stand testifying to every aspect of the case from start to finish.

An Investigator with the Louisiana State Police testified to what they found in the Parker apartment including the 3 computers with child porn.

Jeff Chapel, a Special Agent with the United States Department of Homeland Security testified to what was found not just on the computers but elsewhere. He described several Google searches that were in the history of the computer including:

How to get rid of my daughter

Father daughters having sex

Fathers having sex with daughters

Can fathers have sex with their daughters

Teen sex doll

How young can a girl be to have sex

Can a big d**k hurt a little girl

He also discovered several domains registered through Blue Host to Duane Parker and paid for by Parker. They included:

Hot Little pre-teen girls

Little hot sexy girls

Hot Pre-teens.org

Hot young sexy teens

Fresh Preteen

Those have since been removed.

The investigation was also to track IP addresses to where they originated when Parker contacted these young children. After the locations were discovered which were mostly from motels and hotels a matching credit card statement of Parkers was found itemizing the same location showing he at stayed at the location at the date and time indicated.

Montgomery County Prosecutor Monica Cooper showed the jury pages upon pages of conversations between Parker and the young girls. In most Parker was attempting to send them videos of him masturbating and even suggesting that he could make a video the same while screaming out the name of the person he was communicating with. Most of the young girls denied offers, many blocked him, but none were shown to have taken him up on the offer. Most called him a creep, sick, or sleaze bag.

After all the testimony the jurors spent several hours deliberating and came back with a verdict Wednesday afternoon of guilty.  They were allowed to go home and return Thursday morning for the punishment phase of the trial. That took less than an hour Thursday afternoon when the jury returned the maximum allowed by law for this type of case of 20-years in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and a $10,000 fine. Parker seemed unmoved by the verdict.

Prosecutor Monica Cooper along with Constable Rowdy Hayden and Captain Seals gave there thanks to the Montgomery County Jury who had to endure the 4-day trial and having to view hundreds of pornographic photos and videos.


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