Man charged with sex abuse after 14-year-old boy responds to Craigslist:

Tom Malenya accused of using Craigslist to lure teen for sex:

41-year-old Tom Lusuli Malenya of Silver Springs, Maryland has been charged with allegedly having sex (child rape) with a 14-year-old boy that he met over craigslist. Malenya is said to have posted an ad on craigslist seeking sex with other men. So basically he was another guy cruising for anonymous gay sex on craigslist. I have nothing against gay people having sex. I just find it creepy when anyone of any sexual preference trolls craigslist for hookups.

Anyway, a 14-year-old boy responded to his ad and police say that they had sex. When the boy’s mom found out she posed as the boy on his phone and had the following text exchange with Malenya…

She said “what R we going to do?”

According to court documents, he said: “Shower, kiss, cuddle, and (expletive)”

“Why do u like me?” she continued. And he responded: “you are sexy.”

At that point, the mother turned things over to police who continued to text him…

Turning the Craigslist case over to Metropolitan police, a detective posed as the boy. Texting Malenya, he asked: “what do you like best about me?

He responded: “The Shower we had together,” according to documents.

The undercover officer mentioned the boy’s age, and Frank allegedly responded, “Are you 14?”

When the undercover detective asked whether that was OK, the man responded “As long as you don’t tell anyone is cool,” charging documents said.

That’s pretty much you need to know about that. And anyone who says the kid set him up is an idiot. Malenya had to know the boy’s approximate age and obviously didn’t care. 14-year-old boys, especially those who may be shy about their sexual orientation, are not sitting around thinking how they can set up older men on craigslist. If you honestly think that you’re a moron.

This case highlights three issues in my opinion. The first is that kids that maybe just realizing they’re gay in their teens have few places to turn to in society since an admission of that at that age may result in several bad reactions from the less enlightened ranging from being kicked out by their parents or being severely bullied at school. So instead we have an alarming number of teens turning to places like craigslist looking for acceptance when the creeps on craigslist are just looking for a piece of young tail.

The second is that parents are still allowing their kids to roam the internet unsupervised. As I’ve said many times before no 14-year-old needs to be on craigslist. Since the downfall of MySpace, it has been the go-to place for online predators.

Lastly, it shows that craigslist needs to moderate the personals and casual encounters sections as obviously the community policing they rely so much is about as worthless as a screen door in a submarine.

Craigslist is still not cleaned up folks and won’t be until they moderate their site.