FBI: Man drove from Canada to have sex with Indiana girl
FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) An FBI agent and officers with the Fort Wayne Police Department arrested a man from Canada outside the Glenbrook Mall on Tuesday after gathering substantial evidence that he had driven from Canada on multiple occasions to have sex with a 14-year-old girl from Auburn, Indiana that he had met through the online dating site Ashley Madison.
Ala El Bashatly, 37, of Waterloo, Canada faces charges of coercing a minor to have sex and engaging in interstate commerce with the intention of having sex with a minor.
According to a criminal complaint filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Fort Wayne, the investigation began on April 19 after a detective with the Indiana State Police was contacted by an employee with the Indiana Division of Child Services regarding the possible sexual abuse of a girl.
The girl’s father told investigators that she had showed him $200 in cash she had after he had asked to borrow $20 from her. When he asked his daughter where she had gotten the money, she told him a man had given it to her to buy baby clothes because she thought she might be pregnant. She explained to her father that she had met the man on Ashley Madison and that he had driven down from Canada on April 17 where he picked her up and drove her to a Fort Wayne hotel where the two had sex.
She said she met the man on Ashley Madison in March and he had driven down on March 23 and the two had sex at her house while her mother was at work. The girl told the man, who she identified as Alan, that she wanted to become pregnant. After telling him she was only 14, he responded that he didn’t care and gave her $20 to pay for a pregnancy test. After the encounter, the two continued to communicate online and he eventually made a return trip to meet her on April 17, as she had told her father.
On April 22, the FBI agent gained access to the girl’s email account and that afternoon he received a message from a person presumed to be Bashatly. The two exchanged messages over the next several weeks and on June 12 an arrangement was made where Bashatly would drive to Fort Wayne and meet the girl outside the JC Penney story at Glenbrook Square Mall two days later.
On June 14, Fort Wayne Police made a traffic stop of Bashatly’s blue Kia in the Glenbrook parking lot.
According to the criminal complaint, Bashatly admitted to what the girl had previously told investigators.
