Canadian 'boy' turned out to be man who molested U.S. teen, gets 46 years behind bars
A Canadian man was sentenced to 46 years in a U.S. prison after pleading guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old Indiana girl last year.
The Hendricks County Prosecutor’s office said Monday that Mahdi Hosseini, a 22-year-old from an undisclosed town in Manitoba, entered guilty pleas to child molesting and other charges related to his interactions with the teenager he’d met online and later travelled to meet in Avon, her hometown west of Minneapolis.
“This defendant deliberately sought out a child, gained her trust, deceived her family, and crossed international borders to exploit her,” prosecutor Loren Delp said in a statement on Facebook.
Based on court documents reported by FOX59 and The Winnipeg Free Press after his arrest in early September, Hosseini first made contact with the minor in April through Discord, a social media messaging platform, where they cultivated a relationship that soon led to the exchange of indecent messages and photos.
The girl’s mother told authorities she was aware the girl was chatting with what she believed was a “boy” in Canada, but given the geographical distance — the border at Emerson, Manitoba is more than 1,500 kilometres away from Avon by car — she put her uneasiness aside and allowed the conversation to continue.
Hosseini, posing as the father of one of the girl’s friends, arrived at a garage sale at the mother’s home and, after purchasing some items, invited her daughter to join him and his alleged daughter for a museum visit.
She agreed, but as they drove away, she noticed his Manitoba license plates and then recalled her daughter’s communication with a Canadian “boy.”
When they returned, the mother suggested they all attend a church service together and asked that Hosseini follow them in his car.
On the way, under her mother’s pressure for the truth, the girl said she loved Hosseini and admitted she had been to his hotel room, where all they did was “cuddle and watch movies.” The mother called the police, who met them at the church and took Hosseini into custody.
On the girl’s phone, investigators found lewd photos, sexually explicit messages, and conversations about their plan to deceive her mother.
She told police she knew Hosseini’s age and admitted to having sex with him on Aug. 29, the day after his arrival.
On his device, police said they found a photo of what appeared to be a topless photo of the teenager.
Hosseini’s original charges included two counts of child molesting, a level 1 felony, and one count each of promotion of sexual trafficking of a minor and child solicitation, level 3 and 4 felonies, respectively.
According to criminal defence attorney Shari Blessing at Massillamany Jeter & Carson , the penalties for child molestation in Indiana are 20 to 40 years for acts deemed a level 1 felony. A conviction on a promotion charge carries a sentence of three to 16 years, while a solicitation conviction earns the guilty party two to 12 years. All three include fines up to $10,000.
In Canada, where the age of consent is 16, a conviction for statutory rape, an equivalent charge to Indiana’s child molesting, would carry a sentence of a minimum of one year in prison up to a maximum of 14 years under the criminal code if tried as an indictable offence, per Toronto lawyer Jeffrey I. Reisman. If tried as a summary offence, the minimum jail time is 90 days and the maximum is two years less a day.
Records show Hosseini had no record of prior convictions in Manitoba before he travelled to the U.S., per the Free Press.
It’s not immediately clear if he’s eligible for parole under state law. National Post has contacted the prosecutor’s office for more information.
Had Hosseini committed his crime two states east in Virginia, he could be facing considerably more time incarcerated.
In 2011, Allan Sauve, a 48-year-old school bus driver from Windsor, Ont., was sentenced to five years for each of his 22 convictions of soliciting a child over the internet for sexual purposes for a total of 110 years.
A year earlier, Sauve, posing as a 16-year-old boy, started and maintained an online relationship with what he assumed was an 18-year-old girl, but was actually 14. He shared nude photos of himself during their explicit conversations.
When he threatened to shoot himself, the girl went to a guidance counsellor, who contacted police. An officer then took on the girl’s identity, extending the relationship for 10 months before Sauve said he was on his way to get her, impregnate her and bring her home to Ontario.
Instead, he was arrested on the U.S. side of the Detroit-Windsor tunnel
“No physical, visual or verbal contact and I get the death penalty,” Sauve told the Windsor Star, maintaining his innocence.
“That’s what I call it, 110 years is a death penalty.”
Virginia rescinded parole in 1994.
Meanwhile, last month, a Toronto man was sentenced to a decade in U.S. federal prison after travelling to Virginia last year to meet a girl he thought was 15 and had been trying to coerce into a sexual relationship, but who turned out to be an undercover police officer.
When arrested in June, Tommy Varesh, 54, “was carrying black lingerie and emergency contraception” on his way to meet the supposed girl.
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