A 41-year-old Silver Spring man has been charged with arranging to have sex with a 10-year-old after calling in to a chat line for people interested in hooking up.
John Vanathayan, who has twice been convicted in Montgomery County on indecent exposure charges, faces up to 30 years in prison if he is convicted on the new charge.
Recommended Stories
According to charging documents filed in federal court in D.C., Vanathayan was arrested after a female prostitute contacted D.C. police saying a man she met expressed interest in having sex with young girls.
The woman told police that she met the man on a social networking phone chat line for people who want to meet individuals for sex. The woman and Vanathayan had several phone conversations, and during one of the talks, she informed him that she was a sex worker, documents said.
The man said was looking to have sex with a girl between the ages of 6 and 10 years old.
The woman contacted police, and police began to record Vanathayan’s phone conversations with the woman, who pretended to have found a 10-year-old daughter of a female drug user who was willing to pimp her daughter out for oral sex.
Vanathayan agreed to pick up the purported 10-year-old on West Virginia Avenue in Northeast Washington and then have sex with the child in his van.
He said he has been trying to have sex with children for years and once had a sexual experience with a girl whose mother offered her for sex.
On his way to the arranged meeting place, documents said, Vanathayan called the woman and asked what the girl looked like. The woman said she looked “cute.”
He responded, “I don’t care about how she looks.” He said he just wanted to know how old she looked, documents said.
Police arrest Vanathayan as he pulled up to the location in his van.
This is not Vanathayan’s first arrest. In 2007, a Montgomery County jury found him guilty of indecent exposure, and he was sentenced to 18 months behind bars — all suspended.
He was also found guilty of indecent exposure in 2006 and sent to jail for a month.
