A Dozen Men Arrested In Wenatchee Valley Underaged Sex Sting Operation
All were taken into custody after communicating with undercover officers posing as underaged girls or sex traffickers and showing up at predetermined locations
*Trigger warning: the following article contains references to the sexual abuse of minors. Reader discretion is advised.
Over the weekend of Friday, July 26 to 28 members of the Washington State Patrol Missing and Exploited Task Force arrested 12 men who expressed the desire and willingness to pay to engage in sexual acts with female minors ages 8 to 13.
Some were arrested at Orchard Middle School, where they were expecting to meet up with a 13-year-old prostitute but were instead met by an armed team of police officers ready to take them into custody.
On Monday, July 29, nine of those men stood before Chelan County Superior Court Judge Travis Brandt to face charges. The other three, Mark Ashmore, Guadalupe Alcaraz-Ceballos and Jacob Sea, appeared in Douglas County Superior Court.
Many of the men in Judge Brandt’s courtroom had no prior convictions. But Jacob Barnett, 31, was convicted of rape of a child in the first degree in 2017.
Barnett was charged Attempted Rape of a Child in the Second Degree and Commercial Sexual Abuse of a Minor.
Although he’s currently employed and has an income above the threshold to qualify for a public defender, he asked Brandt to provide him with a court-appointed lawyer.