Former Carnival Worker Gets 10 years for Child Sex Abuse

By: CBS58 Staff

Posted: Mar 10, 2017 4:24 PM CDT

HAMMOND, Ind. (AP) — A former carnival worker has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for using interstate communications to solicit sex with an underage girl.

Twenty-nine-year-old Brendan Theodore Coetzee was sentenced Thursday after pleading guilty to one federal count.

The (Northwest Indiana) Times reports (http://bit.ly/2ndEMQ0 ) federal prosecutors say the South African national met a girl who was under the age of 14 at a Wisconsin carnival in May 2015.

Coetzee maintained contact with the girl online and arranged to meet with her at a motel in Lansing, Illinois, in June 2015 for sex.

He was arrested the next day by police in Munster, Indiana. Records state that Coetzee told Lansing police he had sexual intercourse with the girl twice and knew she was underage.