Multiple sex crimes involving teens meeting men on social media serve as warning to parents

INDIANAPOLIS — This week, two men were arrested and are facing charges in two different cases involving sex crimes with teenage girls they allegedly met using social media.

Child safety advocates say the pair of cases serves as an important warning for parents to watch what their kids are doing online.

In the first case, a man was charged in Hendricks County after allegedly driving to Indiana from Canada to meet a 13-year-old girl.

Logging onto the social media app Discord, court records claim 22-year-old Mahdi Hosseini met a 13-year-old girl from Danville and exchanged explicit sexual messages.

Prosecutors claim the suspect drove from Manitoba, Canada and checked into a Comfort Inn in Avon where the pair allegedly had sex.

The day after Hosseini was arrested for child molesting and child solicitation, IMPD arrested 44-year-old Sonni Evans for rape and sexual misconduct with a different minor.

That 14-year-old victim told police that after meeting Evans on Snapchat, she was raped at a Days Inn along Emerson and told to keep it quiet or the suspect would kill her.

The affidavit in that case shows Evans admitted meeting the teen and taking her to his room at the Days Inn, but he denied having sex.

Child safety advocates say both cases should be a wake-up call to parents.

“You know technology is moving rapidly, and sometimes it’s hard to keep tabs on everything that’s happening, but talk to your kids,” said Genevieve Meyer with the Indiana Trafficking Victims Assistance Program and the Indiana Youth Services Association.

Meyer urges all parents to watch for red flags, monitor their kids’ online activity and be engaged in their lives.

“At the end of the day, just make sure you’re talking to your kids and if things get weird, they can tell you about it and you can help them navigate it,” said Meyer.

While social media can seem like the wild west, Meyer said there are resources available to help parents and children deal with “stranger danger” in the 21st century.

“It used to be the white vans in the parks, and now stranger danger is online. You have to have those conversations with your kiddos, that not everybody is a great person out there,” said Meyer.

Hosseini made his initial hearing in Hendricks County today.

Evans is set to make his initial hearing in Marion County on Friday.

This week, child solicitation charges were also filed against a third suspect in Howard County.

Court records show 26-year-old Malik Salazar is accused of sending inappropriate text messages to a 15-year-old girl asking her to meet up to have sex and smoke marijuana.

Those messages were reported to Kokomo police by the victim’s mother.

At the time of that alleged crime, Salazar was on home detention after he was convicted of child solicitation in Howard County for having sexual conversations with an 11-year-old on Facebook Messenger in 2023.