Blane Christopher Patterson appears in a mugshot. (Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office)
An Arizona man took a cross-country trip spanning some 3,600 miles to kidnap and repeatedly sexually assault a 14-year-old Georgia girl he met online, federal and state authorities allege.
Blane Christopher Patterson, 28, stands accused of one count each of knowingly transporting an individual who had not attained the age of 18 years in interstate commerce — with intent to engage in sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense, and traveling in interstate commerce to engage in illicit sexual conduct with another person between the ages of 12 and 16, according to a federal criminal complaint obtained by Law&Crime.
He also stands accused of four counts of sexual conduct with a minor, one count of kidnapping, one count of custodial interference, and one count of luring a minor for sexual exploitation in Arizona, according to Maricopa County Criminal Court records reviewed by Law&Crime.
The defendant met the alleged victim, identified as Jane Doe, on Discord, a social media messaging app, according to the complaint. When the two first began talking, the girl was 13 and “she always told him her true age, and she knew his true age to be 28 years old.”
On the night of July 28, while staying over at a friend’s house, the 14-year-old girl disappeared.
“At about 3:00 a.m., the friend’s mother awakened to give her own child medicine and noticed that Jane Doe was gone,” the complaint reads. “The friend’s mother reported this to law enforcement, and Jane Doe’s parents have also been in contact with law enforcement.”
An ensuing investigation turned up information about the long-running Discord affair between the minor and Patterson, police say.
The federal complaint alleges that the “communications between the two are largely unknown because” Patterson deleted his account “after personally meeting Jane Doe and picking her up.”
Officers in Lafayette, Georgia, requested the girl’s chat logs directly from Discord and learned enough: she had been talking with a man the day she went missing – and the two had arranged a meeting. Additionally, the complaint says that the two “agreed” that Patterson “would drive to Georgia from Phoenix, Arizona, to pick up Jane Doe and bring her back to Phoenix, Arizona to live with him at his residence.”
And, according to the FBI, that’s more or less what happened.
On Aug. 18, law enforcement finally caught up with Patterson and the teenage girl at his residence in Phoenix “in the same bed, and both were nude or nearly nude,” the complaint says.
The alleged victim and defendant were later interviewed by federal agents and local police.
“Jane Doe stated that on the way from Georgia to Arizona, they did not stay at motels, but rather at rest stops,” the complaint reads. “She stated that she changed her hair from long black hair that reached her butt to cutting it to shoulder length and changing the color to blonde. When she left Georgia, she left a suicide note to make her family think she was going to kill herself.”
Both allegedly discussed various sexual incidents that occurred during the trip from Georgia to Arizona, and then once they arrived.
“Patterson stated he had recorded them having sexual intercourse, which they watched, and then he deleted,” the complaint goes on. “Patterson stated that he introduced Jane Doe as his 19-year-old girlfriend ‘June’ to his family and people at church, which was a false name and age.”
Patterson allegedly said he agreed to go and pick up the girl and take her across the country once she “told him that the conditions were bad at her home and that she wanted to leave,” the complaint says.
During her interview, the girl allegedly said she told Patterson “she wanted to leave the current situation she was in at home, but also that she did not think that Patterson would actually ever travel to her until shortly before it happened and she left with him,” the criminal complaint says.
He’s set to appear in county court on Aug. 28.
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