Villarose
- Merlino says family punished for others' mob ties
- Camden County judge seriously hurt in bike accident
- Racism underlies rage at Obama presidency
- Dogs try out for role in "Oliver!"
- 5 area schools win U.S. Blue Ribbon honors
- New Pa. public-records law: lots of requests ... & lawsuits
- Ronnie Polaneczky: Pen to paper: Will Madoff make him rich?
- Drawn by Obama's proximity, activists spar on health care, abortion & other issues
- Ailing woman, 78, spared eviction after PHA's reasoning collapses
- ACORN shows 'pimp' and 'pro' the door here
- Obama in Philly, fundraising for Sen. Arlen Specter
- Blockbuster may shutter 960 stores
- SnapGlow.TV: Modern Gems Galore!
RELATED STORIES
Local coach arrested in underage sex sting
The special agents assigned to the state Attorney General's Child Predator Unit can't predict whom they'll find lurking on the Internet.
But once they assume the identity of a teenage girl, someone always finds them.
"I can guarantee you that there is a predator hitting on one of our undercover agents now, as we speak," said Nils Frederiksen, a spokesman for state Attorney General Tom Corbett.
Yesterday, Corbett announced three more arrests, including a volleyball coach at Kennedy-Kenrick Catholic High School, a Philadelphia archdiocesan school in Norristown.
H. Michael Villarose II, 34, who had coached the girls' varsity team since 2007, has been charged with unlawful contact with a minor for allegedly sending nude photos to an agent whom he believed to be a 13-year-old girl and asking for oral sex.
Using the screen name "coachv1975," Villarose, of Plymouth Meeting, offered to buy the girl a camera phone.
"U'd have to earn it though," Villarose allegedly wrote, in a series of sexually explicit e-mails.
He previously had contacted a separate undercover agent, who also was posing as an underage girl, in February 2008, asking, "Do you think ur ready for sex?"
Villarose, who resigned his coaching position this week, had passed a criminal-background check and child-abuse clearances, according to the Archdiocese.
Villarose's attorney, John I. McMahon Jr., said yesterday that his client has accepted responsibility for the messages, but never intended to act on them.
Mary E. Rochford, the Archdiocese's superintendent of Catholic schools, said there is no evidence that Villarose abused schoolchildren.
"We are surprised and distressed to learn of these charges," Rochford said.
News of Villarose's arrest last week was kept under wraps because state investigators were close to making two other busts, Frederiksen said.
Howard Douglas Davis, 54, of Lebanon, who identified himself online as an "OLDer male," allegedly told a teenage girl that he wanted a "long-term love and sex relationship with a special young girl."
Davis, arrested Friday, sent the girl nude photos and a Web camera wrapped in checkered boxer shorts, according to the criminal complaint.
On Tuesday, agents arrested Chad Randall Keefer, 43, of Franklin County, after he drove to York County, where he had planned to have sexual contact with a 13-year-old girl whom he had met online, authorities said.
In all three cases, the "girls" were undercover agents.
The state's Child Predator Unit has made 57 arrests this year - a nearly 50 percent increase over the same time period last year.
Many of the defendants don't have criminal records.
"That's the thing: They can look and be just like your neighbors, the people that you wave to across the street," Frederiksen said.
And the publicity surrounding the arrests hasn't slowed them down.
"They know we're out there," Frederiksen said.
"This is not a surprise."
