WHEELING, W.Va. — The West Virginia man who picked up a 14-year old girl he met online in Ohio so he could take her to a hotel in Wetzel County and have sex with her is going to a federal prison for nine years.
Mark Loring Dawson, 52, of Charleston, was recently sentenced in U.S. District Court following his conviction, earlier this year, on a federal charge of “travel in interstate commerce with the intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct.”
Dawson said he drove to Sardis, Ohio, where the girl lived, two times between 2012 and 2013 and they would then go together to a hotel in New Martinsville.
Dawson said he met the girl on a social media website and claimed to be much younger than he actually was.
As part of his sentence, Dawson will have to register as a sex offender when he is released from a federal prison and will be under the supervision of the U.S. Probation Office for the rest of his life.