Mass. man gets 34 years for ‘terrorizing’ Texas teen girl

A 49-year-old Massachusetts man has been sentenced to 34 years in prison for “terrorizing an innocent” Texas teenager by grooming and sexually assaulting her, the Department of Justice said.

Ehab Sadeek, who was found guilty in November 2021 following a one-day bench trial, was charged with multiple counts of child exploitation in what the sentencing judge called one of the most “egregious cases,” according to the DOJ. He was sentenced Tuesday to 405 months in federal prison and will have to register as a sex offender upon his release.

Sadeek traveled from Massachusetts to South Texas to have sex with a 13year-old girl he met online, a federal complaint said.

George West police were called to the victim’s home in May 2020 in response to reports of a suspicious man who had been parked outside the victim’s rural home for over an hour. When officers arrived, Sadeek told them he had been helping the victim’s family.

The victim told police that she and Sadeek were eating before he started touching her “private area,” the complaint said. She told police that Sadeek forced her to have sexual intercourse multiple times and that he brought lingerie for her to wear.

They had arranged to meet while the victim’s grandparents were at a doctor’s appointment in Corpus Christi, according to the DOJ. The victim said that when Sadeek started to kiss and grope her, she asked him to stop, but he forced her to perform sexual acts, the complaint said.

Investigators discovered that Sadeek had groomed the girl, sending sexually explicit messages on social media for two weeks before he traveled to Texas to have sex with her, the complaint said.

In the messages that investigators found, Sadeek told the teenager that he loved her and that “everything feels alive, joyful and more beautiful” around her, the complaint said.