ORLANDO – A fifth-grade teacher and a man who left his wife and kids at a hotel were among 38 people arrested during an undercover child-sex sting in Florida.
The 10-day undercover operation dubbed "Operation Cyber Child" saw undercover officers posing as children on internet chat sites to catch the men in Orlando, MyFoxOrlando.com reported.
Matthew Chillcott, a 43-year-old teacher at Lawton Chiles Elementary School in Orlando was arrested after agreeing to travel to a location to have sex with a detective posing as a 14-year-old girl. He had been in contact with the undercover officer since January and is also a youth soccer coach.
Police said that one of the other suspects, 33-year-old Illinois man John Bandel, was in Orlando with his family for a vacation and waited until his wife and children fell asleep to sneak out of his hotel room.
Detectives also arrested 31-year-old Wilson Silva of Brooksville, Fla., a registered sex offender since 2001. Investigators say Silva responded to a fictitious ad posted on Craigslist by an undercover Mount Dora Police detective posing as the stepmother of a 14-year-old girl, and he offered to come to the undercover location to teach the girl how to have fun with sex.
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said, "You see a person, we see a monster. These are all pedophiles, they're all dangerous, they're all out trying to have sex with very young children and they'll even walk boldly into your home when they think you're not there to attack your child."
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