Steven Bagley - Internet Pedophile - Charged with child molestation

On a Web site frequented by pedophiles, a young man began bragging last fall about how he’d sexually assaulted a young girl he knew.

The man didn’t divulge his real name or where he lived, the state police said, but as he chatted online off and on for the last several months about the assaults, volunteers working for an Internet watchdog organization, Perverted Justice, searched for his real identity.

A volunteer learned his identity on Thursday and tipped off the Rhode Island State Police, who began looking for him, said Capt. LeRoy V. Rose Jr. The suspect himself divulged his own address on Saturday, Rose said, when someone online offered to send him a package of clothing for the young girl and asked for his mailing address.

The state police allege that Steven Bagley, 19, was the man engaged in the online conversation, and that he gave out his home address at 1327 Elmwood Ave., in Cranston.

Instead of a package, Bagley had state police detectives on his doorstep.

Bagley was arraigned Sunday on a charge of second-degree child molestation and released on $15,000 surety bail. The state police had charged Bagley after interviewing him and after seizing his computer and reviewing his conversations on the site, Rose said. The state police computer forensic detectives are now conducting a thorough investigation of the contents of his computer. The state police have located the child, who is under 14, and are working with the Child Advocacy Center in the investigation, Rose said.

The Perverted Justice organization investigates and exposes pedophiles on the Internet. Its volunteers may pose as children in Web chat rooms or, in this case, they monitor Web sites where pedophiles are talking about children they’re assaulting, or comparing ways to lure children and conceal their assaults, said Xavier Von Erck, the organization’s founder.

“These are the lowest of the low, the most disturbing individuals we run across,” Von Erck said yesterday.

Bagley appeared on one of the Web sites and described his assault on a child, Von Erck said. “He talked about one child and trying to molest other children as well,” Von Erck said. As soon as Perverted Justice obtained the man’s identity, it turned it over to the state police, who acted immediately, he said.

Rose said the state police are investigating whether there are other victims.

Perverted Justice had a hand in exposing an assistant principal at Bishop Hendricken High School in 2004. Timothy J. Sheldon ended up pleading no contest to a charge of soliciting a minor online; the 14-year-old boy he thought he was corresponding with was actually a member of Perverted Justice.