Federal and local law enforcement rescued a girl who was lured to a California motel room by a Pennsylvania man she met online who is alleged to have groomed her to send him sexually explicit images and to commit self-harm, officials said Monday.
Matthew Edward Pysher, 18, had been in contact with the victim for three months before he and the girl, 13, met up at a motel in Castaic, north of Los Angeles, where he was arrested Friday night, officials said.
“The facts charged in this case are chilling,” said Bill Essayli, the first assistant U.S. attorney for Central California. “If your children have access to use the internet, sadistic predators may have access to your kids."
The man, from Bangor, Pennsylvania, is connected to Nihilistic Violent Extremism, known as NVE, and was initially charged with travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct, Essayli said.
The extremists associated with the movement "prey on children and talk them into compromising sex acts and self-mutilation," said Akil Davis, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office.
Essayli told reporters in Los Angeles: "So they want to bring down society, and they want to get other young people to join them and also be despondent with them.
"It’s a very sick and twisted ideology. And again, they’re looking for kids that are already vulnerable. This poor girl, maybe she felt isolated, she felt alone, and this guy befriended her and started talking to her, and you can see how he’s using affection to try to persuade her to harm herself," Essayli said.
NVE predators often use platforms connected to gaming and young people, such as Discord, to reach out to potential victims, State and federal law enforcement agencies have said.
"We believe that he is associated with this nihilistic, violent extremism ideology, NVE, one of the most twisted and disturbing ideas to crawl out of the internet," Essayli told reporters.
The suspect, using the online handle "Piano Man," struck up an online friendship with the victim while she was in a group chat dealing with mental health issues, Essayli said.
Pysher had "flown from Philadelphia that day to meet the victim, intending to engage in criminal sexual activity with her and to mutilate her" through cutting, Essayli said.
"The victim told law enforcement that he had engaged in sexual conduct with her and that he used a knife to repeatedly cut her and that he also choked her to the point where she couldn't speak," he said.
The girl's mother had reached out to the FBI on Feb. 10 to report that her daughter was being encouraged to harm herself by a man she met on a "Discord server related to individuals suffering from mental illness."
Federal authorities were already working on the case before the girl ran away to meet the suspect in a northern suburb of Los Angeles County, officials said.
The California Highway Patrol was the first agency to reach the man and the girl.
"I really want to tip my hat to the officers on the front line, from the California Highway Patrol and our detectives," Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said. "They literally saved this young lady's life."
Pysher was scheduled to appear in court Monday afternoon. NBC News has reached out to a lawyer representing him.
A representative for Discord could not immediately be reached for comment.
The NVE movement is also known as "764," based on the first three digits of the Texas ZIP code where it began, officials have said.
Federal law enforcement has been increasingly sounding the alarm about NVE, saying it is a form of child exploitation that has been difficult to control because of the ease with which perpetrators meet potential victims online.
Late last week, federal authorities in Boston urged parents to keep close tabs on their young ones' digital activities.
The movement's decentralized spread, more as an "ideology" and less of an organized effort, makes it all the harder to combat, officials said.
"This isn't like an organized terrorist organization," Essayli said.
"These are very despondent young males, particularly, [and] they have a very negative view of the world, and they want to bring society down. "
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 or go to 988lifeline.org to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. You can also call the network, previously known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, at 800-273-8255 or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources.
