Man charged with molesting Watkinsville child he met online

By Joe Johnson

A Gwinnett County man was arrested Sunday at his college in Connecticut for allegedly molesting a Watkinsville child who he met online last month, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

GBI agents and campus police officers at Eastern Connecticut State University arrested 22-year-old Victor Jimenez Pastor while on campus on charges of aggravated child molestation, computer pornography, violating Georgia's Child Exploitation Prevention Act, obscene internet contact with a child, electronically furnishing obscene material to minors, and enticing a child for indecent purposes, the GBI said on Friday.

According to the GBI, its Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes Unit on March 18 received a request from the Oconee County Sheriff’s Office to assist in a child exploitation investigation. The investigation revealed that a man, identified as Pastor, was in contact with a child over a social media platform and was later sexually assaulted by this man.

Pastor was chatting in a sexually explicit manner with the child and travelled from his residence in Lawrenceville, to meet the child in Watkinsville, from where he then drove the child to another location in Oconee County, where he committed the offense of aggravated child molestation before returning the child home and driving back to Lawrenceville, according to the GBI.

Arrest warrants were subsequently obtained, but when investigators attempted to locate Paster, he had already returned to college in Connecticut, the GBI said.

Pastor was booked into city jail in Willimantic, CT, where he is awaiting extradition to Oconee County.

Anyone with information about other cases of child exploitation is asked to contact the GBI’s Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes Unit at 404-270-8870. Tips can also be submitted by calling 1-800-597-TIPS (8477), online at https://gbi.georgia.gov/submit-tips-online, or by downloading the See Something, Send Something mobile app.