Internet Sleuth Finds Kidnapped Teen

School employee posts bond on child porn charges

5NewsOnline/September 14, 2004
By Kim Riemland

Clark County -- When a missing 14-year-old Camas girl was allegedly chained and sexually tortured for nearly two weeks inside a Fircrest home, neighbors never heard any cries for help.

However, someone 150 miles away picked up her high-tech distress calls, and finally broke the case of the missing girl.

That someone was Xavier Von Erck. He who runs an anti-pedophile website called www.perverted-justice.com.

"She would log onto her Yahoo account, then immediately log off because she didn't want to get caught doing it," said Von Erck. "But she was doing it to show the world that she was alive and that people needed to look."

Court documents say Stanley Scott Sadler, 47, met the girl on the Internet.

Sadler kept her in his Fircrest home and repeatedly raped her, videotaped her, even hit her with a whip and bamboo stick. When he'd leave the house, he would chain her to the bed.

But the girl says she managed to get to Sadler's computer several times just long enough to log on and off again. The teen hoped someone would notice.

The missing girl's mother suspected her daughter had been lured on the Internet and wondered if the computer held clues to her whereabouts.

When Clark County detectives wouldn't -- or couldn't -- follow online leads, she asked for help from the Perverted Justice web site.

Von Erck discovered the girl's user name had shown up on her Internet accounts since she'd gone missing. He then found the Internet provider address of the computer the girl was using to log on.

Comcast then helped him trace that IP address to Sadler's Fircrest home.

When a Fircrest officer knocked on the door, he says he found the girl in an upstairs bedroom. He says she was half-naked, curled up in the fetal position, and dazed. It appeared she was being raped as the officer arrived.

"It's sickening to me that she could have been recovered merely days after she was gone, but it ended up being nearly two weeks," said Von Erck.

Finding the girl was a fairly easy job for Von Erck, once he took on the case. Not so for Clark County detectives.

"Obviously, we don't have the resources to do that," said Clark County Detective Dave Trimble. "And we don't have people that are knowledgeable that can devote full-time to that sort of activity."

The girl is now home safe thanks to the online sleuthing of a man who works to keep children away from pedophiles on the Internet.

Meanwhile, Sadler is charged with kidnapping, child rape, and sexual exploitation of a minor. He is being held on $250,000 bail.