Sex offender who lured Charlotte teen to Missouri indicted by federal grand jury

Julia Coin
·4 min read
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The man who police say used a social messaging app to meet and eventually coerce a Charlotte teen into running away and producing child pornography will face a judge in her hometown.

Christopher Porter, 30, has been held in Missouri since Kirkwood police found him in a Lowe’s parking lot with the girl. They were near St. Louis — 750 miles away from the Indian Trail home she left 12 days earlier.

The two met on Whisper, Kirkwood police told The Charlotte Observer, and he picked the girl up in Oklahoma. The app, similar to Discord, allows users to remain anonymous.

“Whisper is the best place to discover secrets around you... Search For Something! No seriously, do it,” the platform says on its website.

Porter was violating his sex offender registration when he traveled outside his home state of California, where he “has a prior for lewd and lascivious acts with a child under the age of 14,” according to a complaint filed by Missouri police.

A federal grand jury in Charlotte indicted Porter Wednesday, charging him with production of child pornography and committing a “qualifying felony offense involving a minor.”

A St. Louis grand jury in December indicted him with four counts: statutory rape, statutory sodomy, sexual exploitation of a minor and possession of child pornography — including “moving images” and a video.

Porter could face 30 to 50 years for each of the three counts of production of child pornography. The charge of committing a felony while being required to register as a sex offender could add 10 years on top of that, said the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Western District of North Carolina in a news release.

After searches, missing NC teen found with sex offender 750 miles away from home

Sexual predators on Whisper, messaging apps

In 2022, a 29-year-old was sentenced to 60 months in prison for using Whisper and “engaging in sexually explicit conversations” with someone he believed was a 13-year-old girl from Virginia. In reality, he was talking to undercover police.

A Tennessee corrections officer who police contacted through “the dark web” — again posing as a guardian offering a child for sex — is now spending 17 years in prison for traveling to North Carolina intending to rape a toddler.

What parents, kids should know about sextortion online

“Sextortion can start on any site, app, messaging platform, or game where people meet and communicate,” according to the FBI.

In most cases, young people believe they are talking to someone their own age. The person on the other end may claim to already have revealing photos of the child and demand more. When they receive more, they may threaten to publish them or become violent.

“The shame, fear, and confusion children feel when they are caught in this cycle often prevents them from asking for help or reporting the abuse,” the FBI writes.

In 2022, law enforcement agencies received over 7,000 reports related to the online sextortion of minors, resulting in at least 3,000 victims, primarily boys. More than a dozen sextortion victims were reported to have died by suicide, the bureau wrote in a news release.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children outlined steps parents and young people can take if they or their child are a victim of sextortion, including:

  • Remember, the predator is to blame, not your child or you.

  • Get help before deciding whether to pay money or otherwise comply with the predator. Cooperating or paying rarely stops the blackmail and continued harassment.

  • REPORT the predator’s account via the platform’s safety feature.

  • BLOCK the predator and DO NOT DELETE the profile or messages because that can be helpful to law enforcement in identifying and stopping them.

  • Let NCMEC help get explicit images of you off the internet.

  • Visit missingkids.org/IsYourExplicitContentOutThere to learn how to notify companies yourself or visit cybertipline.org to report to us for help with the process.

  • Ask for help. This can be a very complex problem and may require help from adults or law enforcement.

  • If you don’t feel that you have adults in your corner, you can reach out to NCMEC for support at gethelp@ncmec.org or call NCMEC at 1-800-THE-LOST.