A Franklin man is facing a federal charge after prosecutors say he took an 11-year-old child from Illinois to Indiana to have sex with them last month.
Dylan B. Clark, 19, was charged with transportation of a minor with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois on Sept. 8. He was originally charged with aggravated sexual abuse with a child under the age of 12 in the same court.
He also had been previously been arrested on two kidnapping charges in Illinois for the incident, but those state charges were later dismissed, according to online court records.
The investigation into Clark began on Aug. 27, after deputies with the Vermilion County, Illinois Sheriff’s Department were dispatched to a home in Georgetown, Illinois on a report of a possible child abduction. Deputies spoke with the father of the 11-year-old child, who said that the child had said they were going to a friend’s house. However, when the father talked to the friend, they discovered the child had never been there and that the friend had no idea where the child was, according to a criminal complaint filed by the FBI on Sept. 1.
A short time later, the child’s father told deputies that he was able to access the child’s Snapchat, Gmail and Discord accounts, and discovered a conversation between the child and another person. This person is listed on court documents as DBC, a reference to the account’s username, court documents show.
In the chats, both DBC and the child exchanged photos and text messages. At one point, DBC sent a Google Maps location in a Franklin Township, Indiana park and sent images showing a grey Ford Mustang. The child then sent a ping of a park in Georgetown, Illinois, and asked DBC if they would be able to come. The two then had an about hour-long voice call, court documents say.
Later, the child asked DBC if they were close by, and DBC said they would be there in 53 minutes. Later, when the child was picked up from the park, surveillance video showed Clark, who was driving a grey Ford Mustang, picking them up, documents show.
Deputies, along with the child’s father, were able to use the child’s Discord account to locate Discord, Spotify and Snapchat accounts associated with Clark. The Discord account had a display name of Dylan Clark, according to court documents.
Based on this information, Vermilion County deputies contacted the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office. Johnson County deputies located Clark’s residence in rural Franklin. When the deputies arrived at Clark’s home on the early morning of Aug. 28, they found both him and the child inside the home. He was then taken into custody on an Illinois warrant, documents say.
While deputies were with Clark and his parents, Clark told his parents that he had picked up a girl from a park he had met online and that he “should have never gone to do it,” documents say.
After the child was returned to Illinois, they told Illinois deputies that they had met Clark while playing an Xbox game and would communicate with him through a headset while playing the game. The child later told deputies that they couldn’t remember when they started communicating with him, according to court documents.
The child told deputies that when Clark first brought them to his home, he initially told his parents that the two had met in college. The child also told deputies that they had sex with Clark twice before Johnson County deputies arrived, court documents say.
Clark was later extradited from Johnson County to Illinois. He entered a preliminary plea of not guilty on Sept. 9, and his next hearing is set for Nov. 4.
