A man from Ohio is accused of offering a Florida mother hundreds of dollars to “dunk” and torture her children under water in order to satisfy a bizarre sexual fetish.
Jeff Doland, of Uniontown, Ohio, was arrested by authorities after he flew to Miami, believing he was going to meet a mother of two girls, ages 9 and 12 years old, to pay her $550 to forcibly submerge the children under water until they became unconscious, officials said.
During multiple Internet conversations, Doland told the woman, an undercover agent with the U.S. Secret Service, that “dunking” was his particular form of sexual gratification.
“The allegations made during the course of this investigation are so heinous they are almost outside the realm of comprehension. Without law enforcement intervention, real children could have been in grave danger,” McCollum said.
The undercover investigation began in April when the Secret Service agent was working undercover in an Internet chat room, posing as the mother of two young daughters, officials said.
Doland claimed online that he “liked watching the bubbles” and went on to send the undercover agent explicit images of child torture as examples of what he proposed to do to the two young children, according to a news release.
Doland requested to meet the “mother” in Miami and was arrested when his plane arrived after again describing to another undercover investigator exactly what he wanted to do to the children, including a detailed explanation of how he planned to bind the young girls to the bottom of the pool of water. The arrest was made with the assistance of the Miami-Dade Police Department.
Doland will initially be charged with selling or buying of minors, a first-degree felony, and promoting the sexual performance of a child, a second-degree felony, Attorney General Bill McCollum announced Wednesday.
Doland faces up to 45 years in prison.
