2 men arrested after allegedly using social media to entice teen girls for sex

News admin June 25, 2026 0 Comments

2 men arrested after allegedly using social media to entice teen girls for sex

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Two Hawaii men are in custody in separate cases after allegedly using Snapchat to entice teenage girls for sex.

The company has said it’s doing all it can to keep predators off its platform.

Federal prosecutors charged Jeramie Talos Arend, 43, with producing, received and distributing child pornography. Authorities said the Oahu man rented an Airbnb on Hawaii Island last year to meet up with a 15-year-old girl he met on Snapchat.

Meanwhile, Kainalu Palik, 23, of Honokaa, was arrested for allegedly using Snapchat to exchange sexually explicit messages with a 14-year-old girl over several days.

“You post a picture and it disappears in a wee bit? That came from Snapchat. That was an original Snapchat feature,” said tech expert Shawn “Doc Rock” Boyd, strategic partnerships director with Ecamm.

“So when Instagram brought that in and more people kept doing Instagram, I think people forgot that (Snapchat) existed,” Boyd added.

The platform has reportedly been linked to hundreds of thousands of child sex crimes globally as experts say disappearing messages, location sharing and algorithm-based friend recommendations make it a tool for predators.

However, nothing really disappears online.

“Things can still be found and it depends on sender and receiver,” said retired Honolulu deputy police chief John McCarthy. “If they’re recording, if they’re storing, it may be on their device. There’s time stamps involved showing a link between two IP addresses.”

Congress is also trying to help. Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz is pushing the “Kids Off Social Media Act,” which would block children under 13.

“The way to protect kids is to simply delay the onset of the use of social media, which we have a perfect right to do under statutory law,” Schatz said on the Senate floor last December.

The White House is also reviewing the federal law that provides immunity to websites hosting user-generated content.

Meanwhile, there are apps that allow parents to monitor their kids’ online use.

“The one that’s the most famous that’s really incredible is Bark. But Bark is like 30 bucks a month,” said Boyd. “So a parent would have to be willing to give up that much money a month so they can have a situation where they can see all conversations that happen with their young ones.”

“The rule I had with my kids is, ‘as long as you’re online, I’m your number one friend. I get to see what’s going on.’ And there should be a parental relationship that way,” said McCarthy.

Snapchat’s rules prohibit sexual exploitation, and the company says it uses automated and human review systems to prevent abuse. It also introduced features meant to make it harder for adult strangers to contact young people.