Middle Aged Man Poses As Female Sex Blogger, Solicits Pics of Minors

The Internet age has spawned a number of strange tales of fabricated online personas, fake identities, and cyber-scams. The latest: a middle-aged man who posed as a female sex blogger--and solicited nude photos of minors.

Jezebel posted an account on Nov. 23 reporting on how sex advice blogger Alexa di Carlo was, in reality, Thomas Bohannan, according to a post at Metafilter. The Metafilter post related that, according to blog Expose a Bro, Bohannan posed as a sex worker and advisor and funneled young sex workers to himself. "Bohannan is also known as 'Matt' when he scams escorts, and 'Caitlain' when he flirts with minors on teen forums and solicits nude pics from them," the Expose a Bro posting alleged.

Expose a Bro recounted the process by which its investigation led to the conclusion that Alexa was the fictitious creation of Bohannan. "Pat Bohannan has been employed at a computer job at the Delaware Emergency Management Agency (DEMA), although he claims to have been recently fired. Bohannan had the ideal career for being able to sit on his ass all day blogging/tweeting incessantly as 'Alexa,' " the Expose a Bro posting added. "Yup, not only is Pat wasting any old employer's time and money, he was actually on the government's payroll."

The Expose a Bro posting went on to allege that Bohannan had been behind a "sex education" site aimed at teens that was called Caitlin's Corner, and that he had presented himself as a sex worker. "Bohannan's penchant for underage sexuality is extra disturbing when you consider that when he lived in Tennessee, he volunteered to work with and shoot photos of high schoolers," the Expose a Bro posting said. "As 'Caitlain', Bohannan groomed minors into engaging in sexually inappropriate conversations and sharing nude photos of themselves."

The posting also alleged that Bohannan used a female online persona to encourage young women to visit him as a client for paid sexual encounters. "He used 'Alexa' to groom newbie and wannabe escorts (as well as the minors he flirted with) into thinking his own fetishes were hot, and then as 'Alexa', convince them to meet 'her' 'trusted client Matt' to do those things," the posting claimed.

The Jezebel posting quoted from a blog posting that purported to be from a young woman coaxed into providing nude pictures of herself. "On the forum, there was a specific few threads for posting pictures of your breasts and ass and more general ones for just pictures of yourself," the posting explained. "Complete nudity was NOT permitted but this basically meant that if you posted a picture of your breasts with just your hand covering your nipples, you were fine. Even if you were a minor.

The fictitious female persona named Cathy "would encourage me when I expressed nervousness about posting a photograph of myself in just that position," the author of the post claimed, adding, "I was 17. I posted the picture, and was extremely flattered by the response especially from Cathy. Most of the other members were as far as I know, under 18 or under 21 at least."

Another post expressed regret at the things that "Cathy" allegedly convinced young people to do online. "Now I know that the one person I thought of as the safest of all was the one lying about everything--well, I no longer feel very happy with myself. I feel sick and ashamed and terrified that these incredibly intimate, private photos are out there somewhere."

Jezebel went on to note, "if everything bloggers are saying about Bohannon is true, then he used his pseudonym to fool and hurt people. He harmed sex workers by adding more misinformation to the conversation about their lives, he harmed sex bloggers by misusing the anonymity some of them need to write safely, and he harmed teens, who already have too few trustworthy resources to turn to when it comes to sexuality."

Reinvention (and Madness?) in the Online Realm

Insofar as the story concerns falsified personae presented online, it bears general similarities to the recent film Catfish, in which a young photographer named Nev Schulman is contacted by a nine-year-old girl named Abby who sends him paintings of such quality she seems to be a prodigy. After befriending Abby, Nev meets her older sister Megan online and falls in love. But when he attempts to meet his new romantic interest in person, he discovers that both the Abby and Megan were the invention of a middle aged married woman with a crush on him.

The story also has parallels to the story, from earlier this year, of a man in his 40s who assumed the identity of a teenaged closeted gay hockey player in his blog postings. A May 21 Mediaite article reported that the fake blogger, who posted under the name "Mikey," was nailed by gay sports site Outsports, which claimed to have evidence showing that the purportedly teenaged blogger was, in fact, a man in his late 40s who had "sex profiles on two gay hookup sites."

However, Outsports declined to name the alleged fake blogger under any moniker other than his established blogging name of Mikey, saying, "There has been no evidence that Mikey committed any crime and no underage reader of his blog has stepped forward to claim they were propositioned."

The blog claimed that Mikey was a gay teen who lived in Minnesota and played hockey. The blog first gained notoriety after Outsports published an article about Mikey, and gay youths then began to read the blog and to communicate with one another via the blog. "Mikey" was interviewed for a podcast and was slated to be interviewed for radio, but then, Outsports said, the man behind the deception fell in love with a 23-year-old named Jimmy, a Canadian, to whom the perpetrator behind the blog confessed that "Mikey" was fictional. The man also owned up to the administrators of the blog's server, and his blog was taken down.

However, the Outsports article said, "Mikey" subsequently claimed that he had panicked and claimed to be an older man in order to escape attention. But Jimmy, in correspondence with Outsports, purported to document a pattern of lies. Moreover, Outsports reported that "Mikey" also had profiles at various sex sites where he gave different ages."

"The Mikey who blogged was ultra concerned about the teens who read his posts; he wrote with compassion and caring and offered good advice and support," noted Outsports. "He said he kept the blog going because of numerous e-mails from other teenagers, including athletes, who were inspired by what he wrote. It would be inconceivable such a person would concoct a fake persona to disappear, knowing the pain it would cause these people (some of whom said they contemplated suicide before discovering Mikey's blog).

"If Mikey was real and wanted to disappear, he could have quit the blog in a cleaner way, saying that he was graduating and needed to focus on college. Once the blog was closed, I gave Mikey the opportunity to reveal his true identity to me, promising that I would protect his anonymity while letting everyone know he was real. He never responded to that offer, though it remains open," Outsports added.

Mediaite recalled that another gay blog, JoeMyGod.com, had an encounter with a fake blogger--in that instance, a blogger who claimed he was a gay fireman. The blogger was, in reality, a woman who resided in Canada. A commentator on the JoeMyGod site recollected, "Many gay men followed the site (even though it was saccharine and bizarre). When Joe featured it and many of us here thought it was bogus and mocked it, the avalanche of high teacup, pearl clutching doily shrills went apeshit (You evil fags mocking gay fatherhood). Turned out it was a deranged old woman who was conning everyone.

"Then she claimed she was actually a 'transman,' and believed herself to actually be a gay father and her 'transition' made her do the naughty and fool everyone," the commentator continued. "Again a bleat-herd of ninnygullibles attacks those of us who laughed in her crazy assed face with accusations of 'transphobia'. All in all, this episode was one of the best JMG moments (it unfolded over weeks I think) -- better than any made for tv movie about insanity, identity theft, and bleeding heart sentimental imbecility masquerading as 'nice'."

Such fabulations are not unheard of outside of the blogging world. Gay novelist Armistead Maupin based his book The Night Listener on a phone relationship he had with "Tony," who Maupin thought was a boy who had been subjected to sexual abuse and who was ill with AIDS, but who Maupin later came to suspect was the fabricated persona of a woman claiming to be Tony's adoptive mother, Vicki Fraginals. And the fake memoirs of "J.T. LeRoy," a male teen who had also been subjected to abuse, turned out to be the work of a woman, Laura Albert.

"The whole nature of the closet is that you can't talk about it publicly," Outsports blogger Jim Buzinski told Mediaite, "so when one blogs about being a closeted athlete you accept it for sports reasons. We accept anonymity of gay people all the time. We believe in anonymity."