A Florida woman is facing felony charges for allegedly posing online as a homeschooler to sexually assault an underage boy.
22-year-old Alyssa Ann Zinger was arrested in Tampa on Nov. 24 and taken to jail; she faces two counts of lewd or lascivious battery and five counts of lewd or lascivious molestation. The police do not believe this was an isolated incident.
“It is disturbing and unsettling to see an adult take advantage of a child and prey on them,” Chief Lee Bercaw said in a statement. “Anyone who may have been a victim of Zinger’s, we encourage you to come forward. The Tampa Police Department will support you and ensure a predator like Zinger doesn’t cause you or others additional harm.”
Police say they were tipped off that Zinger allegedly had a relationship with a child between the ages of 12 and 15, and that following an investigation, they learned that she “communicated with the victim primarily through an online social media platform.”
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It all just sounds so alien to me. It’s just such a way of thinking so wholly different from anything I ever think that I have trouble even comprehending it.
Thankfully, I was never preyed upon as a child myself so I’ve only heard accounts from others who had been, but I’m sure it’s hard for a lot of victims to wrap their heads around it too. I would probably spend the rest of my life trying to understand the mind of someone who did that to me. Not as some form of forgiveness, more of a probably hopeless search for a deeper motive even if it was purely a crime of opportunity.
Ugh. The world is so horrible.
Someone close to me was raped the first 5 years of his life by a relative, and has been in therapy (very successfully) ever since. When someone that young experiences ongoing trauma like that, it fucks all the developmental areas in life including the reward/feel good parts of the brain. There are things that the brain becomes wired for that can’t be undone, but with effective treatment can be managed.
Under the best circumstances recovery is incredibly hard, without therapy and proper support it’s not surprising someone could go off the rails like this. Not saying that this predator was abused because I don’t know, but it’s statistically likely.