Grants Pass, Ore.– A 15-year old girl now has to deal with the repercussions of taking nude pictures over the internet. “It’s a heart breaking thing.”
Heartbreak is just the beginning of what the past couple months have been like for her mother, Amy Beene.
“I love my kids so much and I want the best for them and I want to protect them and this makes me feel like I cant protect my own child.”
Beene said her 15-year-old daughter got caught up with the wrong man. “She’s a straight A student, plays the flute.”
The Grants Pass Department of Public Safety said Rick Hall from Reading, Massachusetts was making Beene’s daughter take sexually explicit pictures of herself over the internet from May to August of this year.
She’s one of three victims in Grants Pass. “He contacted the first victim and got her to send photos and then asked her if she had any friends that would also be interested in providing photos of themselves in the same type of sexually explicit manner,” said Lieutenant Todd Moran.
Beene said, “She emailed him and they corresponded for quite a while and he set up a pay pal account through eBay.” She also said she started noticing packages coming to the door for her daughter. Beene didn’t think much of it but when a detective showed up to her door in September she knew something went wrong.
“I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, is he trying to kidnap her? Is he trying to make her move to Massachusetts?'”
Grants Pass Police said Hall ran a counseling business for adolescents and now Hall faces 39 felony charges. Beene said she is thankful for those charges and said this was a huge eye opener for her.
“I don’t know if i’m mad for not paying as close of attention to her online social accounts or mad at the fact that she is a fifteen year old girl and she should know better.”
And said every parent needs to keep close tabs on their kids, something she says she’s doing more than ever. “Monitor your kids. Don’t be their friend be their parent.”
Beene said her daughter ended up telling her that she was taking the pictures to try and help with Christmas gifts. Police say eventually Hall will be extradited to Josephine County and face a trial there.
Each charge he is facing has a minimum sentence of 10 years.
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