A Canton man faces felony charges that say he has HIV and had unprotected sex with a 16-year-old boy with developmental disabilities at the Cee Ray Motel.
BEDFORD, Ohio — A Canton man with HIV is accused of forcing a 16-year-old boy with developmental disabilities to have unprotected sex with him at a motel.
Kenneth L. Sander, 56, is charged with second-degree felonious assault in Bedford Municipal Court. He posted $15,000 in bail money and waived his preliminary hearing. The case will now be considered by a Cuyahoga County grand jury.
Authorities filed charges on Monday after a two-week investigation in which investigators learned the two met on a gay dating website intended for people 18 and older.
"He appears much younger than 16," Nietert said. "His mental capacity is somewhat diminished but he's certainly functional."
The charge says Sander caused serious physical harm because he has HIV and had unprotected sex with the boy. Nietert said on Tuesday he expects more charges to be filed when the case is presented to a county grand jury.
Nietert said his officers raided Sander's home in Canton and seized his computers. The Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force is currently analyzing the computers, Nietert said.
An attorney for Sander was not listed on online court records and attempts to reach him have so far been unsuccessful.
Reports say the boy and his mother reported on Feb. 24 that Sander forced the boy to have sex with him at the Cee Ray Motel on Northfield Road.
The boy, according to reports, is developmentally disabled and reads at a 6th grade level, his mother told police. She also said the Cuyahoga County Board of Developmental Disabilities deemed the boy “disabled,” according to reports.
The boy told police he met Sander in January through a website called Growler that bills itself as a gay dating and social networking site. The two communicated through a cellphone application that allowed the two to communicate with each other.
Reports say the boy told police he and Sander met twice before on Jan. 29 and Jan. 31. Both times Sander picked him up somewhere near his home and took him to the Cee Ray, where Sander performed sex acts on the boy.
The boy said a similar situation happened on Feb. 24, though the boy said he initially declined to meet with Sander, who told the boy he was already driving up to Bedford and to be at a specific location at 4 p.m.
When they got the motel, he said the man forcibly grabbed the boy by the wrists and forced him to have sex, reports say. The boy told police he told Sander to stop at least seven times but Sander never complied.
They left the motel and Sander dropped the boy off at the library. The boy told police he messaged Sander at the library using the app and said he didn’t like what happened.
The boy later told detectives he’s met with 20 men on different websites, including Gay Grinder, Gay.com and Growler, reports say. In one case, he said he went with a man to his New Castle, Pa. home but he usually meets men at the Cee Ray or the Sunset Motel in Bedford.
Officers noted in the report the sites are intended to be for people 18 years or older.
Reports say detectives asked the boy if the men he’s with ever use protection and the boy said no. When asked if any of them informed him they had a sexually transmitted disease, the boy “seemed to go blank and to not be aware” of the risk of contracting a disease, reports say.
Nietert said the case highlights why meeting people online can be dangerous. He also said he believes Sander knew the boy's age and that he had developmental disabilities.
"He knew what he was getting into," Nietert said. "Any time you go online and look for relationships, you expose yourself to danger. In this case, it was more danger because of his situational awareness and life experience."
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