Doral teen accused of lewd acts with 12-year-old girl
MIAMI - A 19-year-old from Doral is accused of sexually battering a girl he met on a social media site.
According to the 12-year-old girl, she met Joaquin Gutierrez on Snapchat and they began to trade 'snaps'.
On April 20th, 2023, she reportedly invited him to her home to play video games. The girl told police he arrived after midnight and entered her bedroom through a window.
Guitierrez and the girl began to kiss and that led to other inappropriate relations, according to his arrest report. The girl said it was consensual. He then left through the window.
On Tuesday, January 16th, Guitierrez surrendered himself at the Miami-Dade police department's Special Victims Bureau and invoked his Miranda rights. He's been charged with lewd battery on a child 12-16 years old.
Gutierrez appeared in bond court.
For now, he's being held without bond. The way he's accused of meeting his alleged is exactly what the FBI is warning parents about. But their focus is on another crime against children that uses social media, "Sextortion."
"The offenders are going to places where children are, their social media, their messaging application, online gaming," said FBI Special Agent Ellie Bray from the Miami Field Office.
According to the FBI, sextortion is when someone coerces a minor to send explicit pictures or video then threatens to release the pictures if the victim doesn't send more photos or payment.
If it involved money, it's financial sextortion. "These subjects are then requiring, instead of additional videos and images, they're demanding financial means, payment through Venmo or other applications that children would have access to," Agent Bray said.
Sextortion crimes are up 20% from October of 2022 to March of 2023.
In a year and a half beginning in October of 2021, the FBI reported 13,000 financial sextortion cases, 12,600 were minors, mostly boys, leading to 20 suicides. The FBI says combating this begins with a conversation.
"Sometimes it can be uncomfortable for caretakers, but you have to have conversations with kiddos about what's out there and making sure they have a comfortable space to talk to you if you were to find something on a child's phone," Bray said.
Bray says parents need to monitor their kids' social media and money. "You can check children's finances. A lot of times children have access to applications that give them small amounts of money, so just see where those transactions are going," she said.
Late this afternoon, we received a statement from the attorney for Gutierrez saying, "These are just allegations. Joaquin is presumed to be innocent and we'll be working very hard to tell his side of the story."
To report cases of sextortion contact your local police or the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI.