Man to be arraigned in alleged Littleton kidnap attempt

LOWELL SUN

Man to be arraigned in alleged Littleton kidnap attempt
By Lisa Redmond, lredmond@lowellsun.com
Updated: 01/10/2010

WOBURN -- A 32-year-old Virginia man will be back in court tomorrow to face charges that he attempted to kidnap a 12-year-old Littleton girl he met online.
Authorities said Daniel O'Brien, of Richmond, intended to abduct and have sex with the girl. He was indicted last month on charges of attempting to commit a crime (kidnapping), enticement of a child and reckless endangerment of a child. He will be arraigned on those charges in Middlesex Superior Court.
Police and FBI agents arrested O'Brien as he stepped off an MBTA commuter train in Littleton at 2:30 p.m. on Nov. 20. He had a return ticket for himself and the Littleton girl he had been communicating with through e-mail and MySpace for months.
After his arrest, police said, O'Brien admitted that he knew the girl's age and that he intended to sexually assault her and place nude photos of her on the Internet.
O'Brien pleaded innocent in Ayer District Court, where he was being held on $50,000 cash bail, which was posted recently. As a condition of his release, O'Brien is to have no contact with the victim.
The girl's stepfather contacted Littleton police after becoming concerned about Internet communications between his stepdaughter and a Virginia man. The stepfather told police the girl was acting odd that morning before school and her backpack was filled with extra clothes and money.
After dropping her off at school, the stepfather and the girl's mother went through their computer and
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found e-mail messages between their daughter and O'Brien, who claimed he was 25. They learned that O'Brien would travel by bus from Virginia to Boston and then would take a train from Boston to Littleton, where he would meet her and take her back to Virginia.
Littleton police contacted the Middlesex District Attorney's Office, which helped in identifying the user of the e-mail account, as well as getting O'Brien's description and the time he would be arriving in Boston. Littleton police and two FBI agents were at the Littleton station for his arrival.
"This was a predatory situation in which the defendant is alleged to have contacted the young victim over the Internet and offered to help her run away from home," said Middlesex District Attorney Gerard Leone.
It is a common scenario.
In 2008, a Florida sex offender was sentenced in New Hampshire to 10 years in prison for driving out of state with a 15-year-old girl from Windham, N.H., whom he met through an online computer game.
In March 2007, Daniel Moses Lenz, 27, of Jacksonville, Fla., arranged to have a friend, Jason Dowling, 23, transport the girl from New Hampshire to Florida to meet Lenz, a convicted felon.
Police learned the girl, who was being home-schooled, had cut off all connections with friends in the area. Her only contacts were a group of online gamers. The girl's mother told police that her daughter mentioned meeting a man named Daniel while online and that he was a 26-year-old living in Florida.
The girl was found with Lenz in South Carolina, a day after she left her parents a note saying she was moving to the Boston area.
Among the convictions on Lenz's lengthy criminal record -- a 1999 conviction for sexual battery against a minor.