The 71-year-old mayor of a southern Oregon town was arrested Sunday, accused of setting up a meeting to have sex with a 14-year-old girl who turned out to be a police officer.
Kenneth Lewis Barrett, who began his two-year term as mayor of Winston in January, spent two weeks exchanging Facebook messages with an online decoy created to target adults soliciting sex with children, court documents said.
He was arrested when he showed up to a designated meeting spot in Myrtle Creek, police said.
Barrett mentions in the online messages several times that he's mayor of Winston, acknowledges the decoy is 14 and describes himself as "71 with the mind of a 17 year old and the energy of a 12 year old," according to a probable cause affidavit.
Barrett faces allegations of second-degree online sexual corruption and unlawful possession of a firearm after investigators said he admitted to having a 9mm handgun without a concealed weapons permit in his pickup.
Winston is a town of about 5,400 people south of Roseburg in Douglas County. It's most known for Wildlife Safari, a 600-acre drive-through animal park.
Barrett was one of four men arrested in the online sting that began in late February, said Myrtle Creek Police Chief Don Brown. The other three range in age from 18 to 51 and one was arrested in California, where he lives, after arranging for the fictitious girl to ride a Greyhound bus to live with him.
Barrett remained in jail Monday.
City Manager Mark Bauer said Barrett's status as mayor so far remains unchanged. Bauer said he hasn't talked to Barrett since his arrest and doesn't know his plans.
"It's never a good thing for a city to have an official, elected or appointed, arrested for any reason," Bauer said.
Facebook messages between Barrett and a Myrtle Creek police officer posing as the girl started March 5 when he commented "hot" on a photo on the police-created page, the affidavit said.
Barrett sent other messages later that day saying the girl should "stay in school and work hard" when told she was 14 and encouraging the girl to stay away from men with "sexual motivation," the court document says.
He also sent selfies and other photos of himself, but it's not clear from the affidavit what kind of photos they were.
On March 6, he told the decoy that she made him feel like a teenager and that he has pictures that he shouldn't have because he's mayor, "but that is my business." He made the decoy promise to keep their interactions a secret.
In other messages, according to the affidavit, the mayor said he thought having a 14-year-old girl as a friend was fun, that he loved her, asked if she wanted him to be a "bad boy or a granddad" and requested that she write him sexually explicit poetry.
He told her he was going to get a divorce and brainstormed several ways they could get together, including meeting in a park or on Mars to populate the planet together, the affidavit said.
The mayor repeatedly talked about sex, expressed excitement that the girl he thought he was corresponding with was a virgin and encouraged her to send him her address because "I am a single old bad boy" and offered to bring pizza and beverages.
They agreed to meet Sunday outside a Myrtle Creek home while the girl's mother was at work. The mayor again talked about having sex with the girl and asked her to "please keep me out of jail," the affidavit said.
When Barrett arrived in his pickup, he messaged the decoy, "The bad boy is here" and a police officer pulled up behind him in a patrol car with its emergency lights on.
Barrett told police he was there to meet "a lady" and buy her pizza, the affidavit said.
He later told the officer that the girl appeared to be 20 on Facebook, that getting pizza with her was his only intention and that he wanted to be a father figure to her.
Brown, the Myrtle Creek police chief and a police officer for more than 30 years, said he's rarely surprised anymore about who gets arrested on child sex-related crimes. He cited a former interim Myrtle Creek police chief, lawyers and others later convicted of the crimes.
"It's certainly unfortunate for the city to have their mayor arrested for this stuff," Brown said. "I'm sure this isn't something he advertised that he was into when he was running for office."
(c)2017 The Oregonian (Portland, Ore.)
