2 Men Plotting To Groom, Rape 3-Year-Old Arrested

Florida police arrested two men who were planning to groom and rape a three-year-old girl.

Volusia County Sheriff’s Office said Thursday that police recently discovered a “series of text messages containing a plot to groom and rape a 3-year-old child.” While Benjamin Worster was arrested in late January, Lafe Best was taken into custody Tuesday.

In December, the girl and her mother moved into the same building where Worster’s was staying. A few days later, the girl informed her mother that Worster had touched her inappropriately. In the same month, Worster was hospitalized after an apparent overdose. This was when the girl’s mother found his phone at his home and discovered a text message thread discussing about grooming and raping the 3-year-old.

The sheriff’s office also posted some of the text messages exchanged between the two “because they demonstrate how predators work to groom young children for sexual abuse.”

“I’m looking up things under an anonymous browser on things that will safely make kids pass out for a couple hours,” Worster said in one of the messages.

Best encouraged him and wrote, “You never know if her junkie mom can’t come up with rent one month she might [j]ust give her to you, lol wishful thinking.”

On Feb.1, the sheriff’s office was notified about Best’s involvement in the case. They executed a search warrant at Best’s house Tuesday. In addition to the text messages, officers found child pornography on his phone.

While Worster was charged with “lewd or lascivious molestation, lewd or lascivious conduct and 21 counts of possession of child pornography,” Best was charged with “conspiracy to commit sexual battery on a child.” Additional charges could be levied on Best after the investigation.

Police said Best was living with a couple who had a 20-month-old baby. Though the baby was not belived to be subjected to sexual abuse, police will continue to follow up.

In a similar incident in January, a Singapore court sentenced a 31-year-old man, Udhayakumar Dhakshinamoorthy, to 13 years in jail for grooming a 12-year-old girl to engage in sexual activity. The incident took place over a period of three months in 2016 but it came to light after the man's girlfriend found videos of the naked girl in his phone.

The court heard that Udhayakumar took the girl to the staircase of a block of flats and asked her to have sex with him. When she told him she wasn’t sure about what it was, he said he would teach her. He admitted to have unsuccessfully tried having sex with the girl on two occasion, Straits Times reported.