Pastor is Touched by A Cop

agency task force on the prowl for pedophiles and child pornographers.\n Timothy Rasey, 42, of Lombard, past at the Faith United Methodist Church now faces one count of possession of child porn and one count of attempted aggravated criminal sexual abuse, both punishable by up to five years in prison.\n The Naperville Police Department first locked the minister into its sights on July 1 when Rasey entered a chat room frequented by men attracted to young teenage girls. A police detective, posing as a 14-year-old Naperville girl, began chatting, then exchanging e-mail. Rasey, meanwhile, transmitted to "her" a pornographic image, giving rise to the child porn charge.\n Eventually, Rasey asked his e-mail correspondent to meet him at a fast food restaurant to arrange some sexual encounters. He bought some condoms on the way to the Elmhurst restaurant. But instead of finding his teenage heartthrob, Rasey found police in wait. At last report, the minister was holed up in the DuPage County Jail with bond set at $500,000.\n Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan, whose statewide Internet Criminal Activity Unit is prosecuting the case, said that the charges, if proven, demonstrate that there are predators at work on the Internet. "It also highlights the need for parents to stay in touch with their childrenĀ¼s computer activities, and for law enforcement to continue to be aggressive monitoring cyberspace."\n Although the first clergyman nabbed by the unit, Rasey actually is the seventh to be arrested by the multi-agency task force. The previous arrest was of a Tennessee man who traveled to west suburban Chicago thinking he would meet the 14-year-old girl with whom he thought he had been chatting.\n In April, the same unit arrested Allen J. Sander, at the time the public works director of suburban Arlington Heights. He was charged with possession of child porn after police allegedly found kiddie porn images on his office computer.