A 31-year-old Florida man was arrested and is now facing charges after allegedly hiding a missing 16-year-old girl from Ohio and planning to engage in sexual activities with her. The arrest was made on Wednesday, January 3, 2024, by Detective Henrick Osthed of the Marion County Sheriff’s Office, with assistance from an FBI special agent who had reached out for help in locating the missing teenager.
According to the authorities, the girl was discovered when she logged into the online video game World of Warcraft from the suspect’s home address in Dunnellon, Florida. Further investigation revealed that the suspect, identified as Thomas Ebersole, also had a World of Warcraft account accessed from the same location.
Initially, Ebersole denied knowing the missing girl, but he later admitted to driving to Ohio to meet her and bringing her back to his home. He claimed to be in a romantic relationship with the minor and expressed intentions of hiding her in his home and eventually marrying her. Ebersole even provided messages from the online chat app Discord to the detective, which detailed his plans to meet the girl in Ohio and engage in sexual activity, despite being aware that he was committing a crime.
Ebersole has been arrested and booked into the Marion County Jail, where he remains without bond. He is facing charges of interfering with child custody, traveling to meet a minor for sexual activity, and sheltering an unmarried minor.
This incident sheds light on the growing threat of online sexual exploitation of children. Reports of “Online Enticement of Children for Sexual Acts” have seen a significant increase, with an 82% rise since 2021 and a 113% rise since 2020, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCME). This surge has been partially attributed to a rise in financial sextortion, where children are targeted to share explicit photos and then blackmailed for money.
Discord, a popular chat messaging app with 150 million users worldwide, has been identified as a platform used by child predators to groom children, trade child sexual exploitation material, and extort minors into sending explicit images. In the past six years, there have been 35 cases where adults were prosecuted for kidnapping, grooming, or sexual assault involving chat messages on Discord.
To address these concerns, Discord has implemented community guidelines that warn minors against engaging in sexual conduct or any behavior that jeopardizes their safety. The platform also prohibits adults from soliciting or engaging in sexual conduct with individuals under the age of 18. Discord has taken measures to enhance child safety, disabling over 128,000 accounts and removing 7,736 servers for Child Safety between July and September 2023. The company has also increased its reporting to NCME, with a 40% increase in reported accounts in the previous quarter.
Law enforcement agencies continue to emphasize the importance of parental awareness and vigilance in protecting children from online predators. The efforts to combat online sexual exploitation of minors are ongoing, and authorities are dedicated to bringing predators to justice.
