Grovetown man contacts 14-year-old girl from church, ends up in jail

A 45-year-old Grovetown man is accused of grooming and sexually exploiting a 14-year-old girl from his church, allegedly approaching her online and eventually sending her an inappropriate photo.

Jason Alexander Shumaker, of Taylor Circle, was charged Tuesday with luring a minor and sexual exploitation of children.

The terrifying situation began last summer, when the girl’s father discovered that Shumaker had been texting with his teenage daughter since July 13.

According to a report, the suspect knew his daughter from church services at Woodlawn Baptist Church on Columbia Road in Grovetown.

The father explained to officers that the text messages were “creepy,” with questions and compliments along the lines of “get to know you,” according to a sheriff’s report.

In his messages, he told the girl that his friends called him “Jay,” but he didn’t give his real name and hid his identity by texting from a fake number. He also revealed in texts that he usually sat on the left side of the church.

The father believed the messages were an attempt to build trust and bond with his daughter and were “borderline inappropriate,” a report said. While the messages, shown to an investigator in July, did not immediately appear criminal, they escalated until Aug. 13, when Shumaker sent the girl a photo of his erect penis, a warrant said.

Before the pornographic image was sent, officers investigated by sharing the text messages with a Woodlawn pastor, Johnny Rockefeller. The pastor identified Shumaker as a possible suspect, saying the man was “relatively new to the church,” having been there for about seven or eight months. Pastor Rockefeller described the suspect as being in his early 40s, married with two children, who often wears scrubs to church and sits on the left side during services.

The sheriff’s investigation led to the arrest this week and Shumaker has been released on bail.

A warrant for tampering with a minor states that from July 13 to August 13, Shumaker sent messages to the minor in a “pattern of conduct intended to induce the minor to commit a sexual offense.”

In Georgia, a person is guilty of manipulating a minor if he or she “willfully and knowingly engages in a pattern of conduct or communication in person, through a third party, through the use of an electronic device, a computer, social media or text messaging, or by any other means to gain access to, obtain the cooperation of, prepare, persuade, entice, or coerce a minor to participate in a sex crime or human trafficking for sexual slavery.”