EXCLUSIVE: Teen allegedly sexually assaulted by man she met online

Friday, July 8, 2016
EXCLUSUVE: Girl sexually assaulted by man she met on Snapchat
A local mother says her teenage daughter was sexually assaulted by a man she spoke with on Snapchat.

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- Investigators say a 14-year-old girl who vanished from her west Harris County home is now in the hospital after she was found incoherent in the middle of a nearby street.

The girl was sexually assaulted, according to her mother. "She's traumatized, she's not verbally speaking. She's not okay at all," said her mother, who we are not identifying because she says the teen is the victim of a sex crime.

Fort Bend County Sheriff's detectives say the teen was located Monday on Dora Meadows near Bissonnet. She'd disappeared the night before around 10pm.

According to investigators, the girl left her family's home voluntarily.

The girl's family says they called the Harris County Sheriff's Office and that they initially treated this as a runaway. "The initial officer who came out, he never looked at her phone ... I don't think he really took me seriously," the girl's mother said.

The girl's mother tells us only later did the family look at the teen's phone, which she'd left behind. In it, she says, they found a message from a man asking her to come outside her home.

She tells Eyewitness News they also found explicit Snapchat pictures from the same man. Investigators say he wasn't the only person messaging her, but her mother says, he was the last person to do so before she disappeared. She says investigators questioned the man but did not arrest him.

"I want him caught, I want him arrested, I want him charged. I want him arrested, off the streets, so he can't hurt anybody else's child," she said.

Detectives are still trying to sort this all out. The Harris County Sheriff's Office would like to talk to anybody with information about the crime.