Canton man found guilty in undercover child sex crime operation

WSBTV.com News Staff
·2 min read
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A Cherokee County jury has found a Canton man guilty after he attempted to meet a child for sex.

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Jerome Walker III, 28, was found guilty of attempting to commit child molestation and attempting to pander a person under the age of 18.

In November 2019, Walker used an online escort site to meet and communicate with a person whom he thought was a 14-year-old girl, officials said.

The child was actually an undercover police officer with the CSO’s Internet Crimes Against Children unit.

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The release said that when Walker starting communicating with the “fake” child, he asked if he could plan a “play date.” He asked the girl if she wanted to engage in sexual acts, even offering to pay for her services.

After texting for a while, Walker and the person whom he thought was the child agreed to meet up at an area in Woodstock.

When Walker arrived at the meeting spot, Cherokee sheriff’s deputies arrested him.

“Mr. Walker made it abundantly clear that he wanted to engage in sex acts with a child. His motive was nothing short of disgusting,” said Assistant District Attorney Meaghan Frankish, of the Special Victims Unit. “While the child in this case was fictitious, it’s important to keep in mind that undercover investigations replicate real-life situations with the goal to identify, arrest, and prosecute individuals before they are able to harm an actual child.”

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Walker was sentenced to 10 years, with the first five years to be served in prison and the remainder to be served on probation.

He must also undergo a psycho-sexual evaluation and treatment during probation.

“As this case clearly shows, the internet can be a dangerous place, with predators actively searching for unsupervised contact with vulnerable children, hoping to entice and entrap them,” said District Attorney Shannon Wallace. “Thanks to excellent undercover work from CSO deputies, one of these predators has been arrested, prosecuted, and effectively removed from our community before he could harm a real child.”

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