A 45-year-old Grovetown man is accused of grooming and sexually exploiting a 14-year-old girl from his church by contacting her online and eventually sending her an inappropriate picture.
Jason Alexander Shumaker, of Taylor Circle, was charged Tuesday with grooming a minor and sexual exploitation of children.
The frightening situation erupted over the summer when the girl’s father found out Shumaker had been texting his teenage daughter since July 13.
A report says the suspect knew his daughter from attending church at Woodlawn Baptist Church on Columbia Road in Grovetown.
The father explained to officers that the text messages were “creepy” with “get to know you” type questions and compliments, according to a sheriff’s report.
In his messages, he told the girl that his friends call him “Jay,” but he did not provide his real name and concealed his identity by texting from a fake number. He also revealed through texts that he typically sat on the left side of the church.
The father believed the messages were an attempt to build trust and rapport with his daughter and was “borderline inappropriate,” a report says. While the messages shown to an investigator in July did not immediately seem criminal, they escalated through Aug. 13, when Shumaker sent the girl a picture of his erect penis, a warrant says.
Before the pornographic image was sent, officers were investigating the case by sharing the text messages with a Woodlawn pastor, Johnny Rockefeller. The pastor identified Shumaker as a possible suspect, saying the man “was relatively new to the church,” having attended there for about seven or eight months. Pastor Rockefeller described the suspect as being in his early 40s, married with two kids, who often wears scrubs to church and sits on the left side during services.
The sheriff’s investigation led to this week’s arrest, and Shumaker has been released on bond.
A warrant for grooming of a minor says that Shumaker messaged the minor from July 13 to August 13 in a “a pattern of conduct meant to persuade the minor to engage in a sexual offense.”
A person is guilty of grooming a minor in Georgia if they “knowingly and intentionally engage in a pattern of conduct or communication in person, through a third party, through the use of an electronic device, a computer, social media or text messages, or by any other means to gain access to gain the compliance of, to prepare, to persuade, to induce, or to coerce a minor to engage in a sexual offense or trafficking of persons for sexual servitude.”
