A British man is jailed in southeast Iowa on charges he flew to this country to have sex with an underage girl he met on the Internet. 51-year-old Barry Beadle of Merseyside, England, is charged with third-degree sexual assault and harboring a runaway. Fort Madison police chief Sam Lozano says Beadle was arrested Tuesday night after a dispute arose over how he tried to pay his hotel tab for a week’s stay — using a check from a bank in England. Chief Lozano says the 14-year-old Fort Madison girl who was staying with Beadle was reported missing by her mother Monday and had apparently been cooresponding with Beadle for three months via her home computer. Lozano says “We feel that Mr. Beadle came to America to have sexual contact with this 14-year-old” and let her stay in his motel room five nights, knowing the girl did not have permission to be there. Police in some larger cities often pose as teens in Internet chat rooms to lure criminals to a hotel room with the promise of sex, only to be arrested upon arrival. Lozano says this case is very out-of-the-ordinary since the sexual rendezvous took place in the town of 11-thousand between an Iowa girl and a man from across the Atlantic.Lozano says it was “luck and good police work” that led to the arrest. The unidentified girl was returned home after questioning. If convicted of all charges, Beadle could face up to 12 years in prison and 15-thousand dollars in fines. Lozano says Beadle told investigators he works in England as a radio deejay.
