Man charged with statutory rape of 14-year-old

Seth Hoyt

By Scott Jenkins

sjenkins@salisburypost.com

A 34-year-old Wake County man is in the Rowan County jail on charges he had sex with a teenage girl after the two met online.

The victim is a 14-year-old from southeastern Rowan, authorities say.

Seth Andrew Hoyt is charged with 10 counts of statutory rape and five counts of soliciting a child by computer. He remained in the Rowan County Detention Center under $250,000 bond Friday evening.

Capt. John Sifford of the Rowan County Sheriff's Office said Hoyt and the victim apparently met on a social networking site in September and began communicating over the Internet.

An investigation revealed Hoyt made at least five trips to Rowan from Wake County to meet with the girl, "where, of course, inappropriate acts took place," Sifford said. One one occasion, Sifford said, Hoyt picked the girl up and took her back to Wake County, where she spent the night.

The girl's mother alerted authorities when she saw the man bring her daughter back home the next day, Sifford said.

Sheriff's Office investigators enlisted the aid of agents from the State Bureau of Investigation the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, who

"They were able to get information from various sources, including computers, and they were able to build a case against Mr. Hoyt," Sifford said.

Investigators arrested Hoyt on Wednesday at 431 McAlpine Circle in Morrisville. That address is listed as his residence in the investive report, though Hoyt gave his home address as 375 Lowell St. in Reading, Mass.

Sifford said Hoyt apparently moved to Wake County from Massachusetts a few months before the Internet relationship with the 14-year-old girl began.

To avoid inappropriate relationships and crimes such as investigators say happened in this case, Sifford said parents and children should be watchful.

"Certainly try to be aware of what your child is involved in on the computer and certainly try to monitor their use and monitor what they're doing," he said. "If they say they're going to be spending the night with a friend, confirm their story with parents and things of that nature."

And he said children and teens need to be careful when striking up online friendships.

"Certainly you never know who's at the other end of the computer when talking with someone," he said. "You should be sure who you're talking with and if you don't know them, don't converse."