Man admits to sexually assaulting teen girl as he pleads guilty in TikTok luring case
CBC
A Charlottetown man has pleaded guilty to using the social media platform TikTok to lure teenage girls to his home to commit sex crimes, also admitting that he sexually assaulted one of them.
Darrel Edison Worth, who also goes by 'Eddie,' was 23 years old when the five crimes to which he pleaded guilty on Thursday took place. He is now 24.
He pleaded guilty to making sexually explicit material available to a child, making arrangements to commit a sexual offence against a child, sexual assault, and two counts of child luring.
The victim's identities are protected by a publication ban, but at the time of the crimes, both "Girl 1" and "Girl 2" were 14 years old. Worth was not charged with any crimes connected to the third girl, who was 15.
The events outlined in P.E.I. Supreme Court in Charlottetown began on March 2, 2024.
Worth, who was known to the girls as 'Eric,' picked them up in Summerside and brought them back to his home.
Charlottetown police officers showed up at that address at around 11 p.m. to do a wellness check on the three girls at the request of Summerside Police Services.
They found the girls there and took them to their homes in the Summerside area.
The officers established "there was evidence" that someone called 'Eric' had had sexual intercourse with Girl 1 at the address where police found them. Police then seized Girl 1's clothes, underwear and a phone, and she told officers she had been communicating with 'Eric' on TikTok.
The next day, police did a search and found a car registered to the address where the girls had been found. It was in Worth's grandmother's name. She had died, but police could see a secondary owner listed: Darrel Edison Worth, born in 2000.
That was the first point at which police learned Worth's age. A person under 16 years old cannot legally consent to sexual activity with a 23-year-old under Canadian law.
In the weeks after, police interviewed Girl 1, got a warrant to search her phone, and sent her clothes off for DNA analysis. Worth officially became a suspect when Girl 1 picked him out of a photo lineup.
In this same timeframe, as Charlottetown Police Services were beginning to investigate him, Worth continued to communicate via TikTok with Girl 2, who was using her mother's phone.
Full transcripts of these TikTok conversations were filed in court, showing he had begun communicating with the girls months before the March 2 encounter.
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