Wichitan paid a teen girl to recruit others for sex. He was sentenced to seven years
A Wichita sex offender who hired a teenage girl to recruit others he could pay for sex was sentenced last week to 60 months in prison after pleading guilty earlier this year in a sex trafficking case. The man was also ordered to serve the 24-month underlying prison sentence in an earlier child sex crimes case where he was given probation, according to court records and Dan Dillon, a spokesman for the Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office.
In all, 40-year-old Long B. Van will serve seven years for taking advantage of children sexually.
A probable cause affidavit released by a Sedgwick County District Court judge says Van contacted the teenage girl repeatedly between Feb. 21 and May 8, 2019. Police discovered 2,903 messages between the pair when they searched her phone, following a sting operation at a hotel where officers had arranged to meet the teen after seeing her advertising sexual acts on an escort website.
In the messages, Van would ask for the girls’ ages and agreed to pay for their company, the affidavit says. The teen pocketed some of the cash, it says.
In at least one instance, he asked to see a girl’s student ID to prove her age, according to the document.
Van was arrested after police discovered the messages. At the time, he was already on probation in a commercial sexual exploitation of a child case where he pleaded no contest to lesser charges of unlawful use of a communication facility, which accused him of using a device like a phone or a computer to commit sexually motivated crimes against a 15- and a 16-year-old girl in 2017.
As part of the conditions of probation in that case, Van was prohibited from having any contact with a minor, told to stay away from pornographic and other sexually oriented materials, and agreed to take a polygraph test every six months, court records show.
Originally charged with aggravated human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation of a child in the 2019 case, Long on Feb. 23 pleaded guilty to amended charges of attempted commercial exploitation of a child and indecent solicitation of a child.
District Judge Tyler Roush imposed the prison sentence on April 7.
