He posed as his underage son and helped detectives trap a man suspected of having sex with the boy after meeting online.
Neither father's nor son's name are being released for their own protection, police tell APBNews.com, but the suspect is 25-year-old Jeffrey Lacey, who was arrested at the family's suburban Detroit home Saturday. "The suspect came to the boy's home thinking that the father had gone away on a hunting trip," Wayne County sheriff's spokeswoman Nancy Mouradian told APBNews Tuesday.
Lacey, a movie theater manager in Dearborn, faces two counts of rape and one count of using the Internet to solicit sex from a minor. Area detectives have been monitoring the Internet full-time for suspicious activity in mainstream online chat rooms. Lacey has no criminal record but he's been ordered held on $150,000 bond, and could face a maximum 20 years in prison if convicted.
The case began when the boy's father read a number of suspicious e-mails in October and called sheriff's deputies. Investigators believe the boy and Lacey had already had sex in February, APBNews says. The boy is said to be undergoing psychological counseling.
