MARION TOWNSHIP, Mich. – Police have arrested a child molester less than a year after he was paroled.
Robert Sohn was charged last Tuesday by the Livingston County Prosecutor with second-degree criminal sexual conduct of a child under 13 years old. A similar crime previously sent him to prison for five years.
It was neighbors living near Sohn who helped alert police. Sohn hadn’t registered as a sex offender as required by his parole.
Police said Sohn was befriending kids and nobody in the area knew he had been convicted of criminal sexual conduct before.
Sohn had been flying under the Livingston County Sheriff’s radar all summer. He was staying in a camper on the back of his father’s property on Pinckney Road in Marion Township, and police said he had been grooming kids at neighboring properties.
“The fact he was staying at a camper at the back end of my property where I live with my two daughters is pretty frightening,” said one neighbor who got to know Sohn, but didn’t want to be identified.
Police said they went to the property owned by Sohn’s father and asked if he knew where his son was, and he said he didn’t.
A neighbor said she saw Sohn out back for months with children, hanging out and riding all-terrain vehicles.
“There’s no way (his father) didn’t know,” the neighbor said. “And I’m sure he wasn’t allowed to be around children.”
Sohn was paroled last September after serving five years of a possible 15 years in prison. He was convicted of five counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct of a child under the age of 13.
Neighbors, who didn’t want to be identified, said they didn’t notice anything strange until the night of Aug. 15. That’s when something Sohn said to two boys was overheard by an adult at a party.
After confronting him, Sohn left with a 9-year-old boy who was acting strangely, and at one point, said he just wanted to see his dad again, witnesses said. The neighbors said they called police.
Officers made their way to Sohn’s camper after midnight where the found the child and arrested Sohn.
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