Warning: the following story is enough to give you the heebie-jeebies and the creepy-crawlies for the rest of the day. Afterward, you’ll want to take a shower and pledge to never, ever, buy your teenage daughter a Webcam.
A Beaverton, Ore., man pretended to be a 15-year-old boy dying of leukemia to win the sympathy of several teenage girls online in order to record them in sexual acts. When one 12-year-old girl attempted suicide twice, Joshua Kistler was found out. He was sentenced to 24 years in prison.
He’ll be 55 when he gets out, which is enough for angry fathers to plot a more fitting revenge (or maybe, with some luck, the government to understand pedophiles can’t be rehabilitated and need much more severe deterrents – 24 years isn’t enough – or maybe just enough to create a hardened criminal pedophile).
Kistler took on the name of his teenage ex-stepson, whose name is now forever sullied by his mother’s mistake, and told the girls he was too embarrassed to be on camera in his dying condition. He sent them instead pictures of Trevor, his former stepson.
His creepy antics went along smoothly until one victim landed herself in the hospital after a suicide attempt. Her harrowing testimony can be found at kgw.com. After duping her into pornographic acts on camera (they were “in love” she says), the girl began cutting herself, an act that was replaced by pot smoking.
When she was 13, she attempted suicide, and after a stint in the psychiatric hospital, she resumed her relationship with Kistler, who told her his friend had committed suicide because of her. And so, she tried to kill herself again.
Fortunately, she wasn’t very good at that.
Of the more heartbreaking parts of the testimony:
He took things from me that weren’t his to take; things that no one has a right to take from another human being.
I, all of a sudden, didn’t believe in God, because I thought if there was a God, why would he let this happen to me?
No, 24 years just isn’t enough.
Following a raid of Kistler’s residence, seized computers revealed various computer media containing sexually explicit images of minors – he secretly recorded all of his interactions with the underage girls. The creep admitted he knew his behavior was illegal and told federal agents that he had “always been a collector.”
The case was prosecuted by trial attorney Steve Grocki of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity section of the Criminal Division and by Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Nyhus of the District of Oregon.
All of Kistler’s victims were ages 12-15.
