Molester Poses as Student in School

Molester Poses as Student in School
By Amanda Lee Meyers

The Associated Press
January 25, 2007

CBNNews.com -- SURPRISE, Ariz. (AP) -- Experts on child exploitation are all too familiar with sex offenders working as scout leaders, coaches and teachers, but this was a new one - a boyish-looking man who posed as a 12-year-old and enrolled in school in what may have been a scheme to find kids to molest.

Now parents in this Phoenix suburb where 29-year-old Neil Havens Rodreick II attended a charter school for four months are asking their children if they had any contact with this "classmate."

And police are interviewing parents, students and teachers, and checking at least three other Arizona schools where Rodreick, a convicted sex offender from Oklahoma, also enrolled.

"We told him that it was a scary man who passed himself off as a kid that went to school for a bit," said Erika Ton Loy, whose 7-year-old son attends the charter school, the Imagine School. "When we heard more about it on the news, we got him up out of bed. My husband wanted to make sure he didn't recognize this guy, and he was like, `Have you seen this guy?' and he said, 'No, I don't know who the heck he is."'

Rodreick - who is about 5 feet 6 and 120 pounds, shaved his body hair and used makeup in an attempt to cover his stubble - has been charged with forgery and fraud in the school-enrollment con, as well as assault against a girl. But investigators have refused to release details of that crime and will not say whether he met the girl through the school scam.

Officials also said Thursday that a search of the home where he was staying yielded a video of Rodreick engaging in sex acts with an unidentified child.
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