Alleged perv: I just ‘wanted a massage’ Boston worker nabbed in sex sting

Alleged perv: I just ‘wanted a massage’
Boston worker nabbed in sex sting

By Marie Szaniszlo  |   Wednesday, April 6, 2011  |  http://www.bostonherald.com  |  Local Coverage
Photo by Nancy Lane

A Boston Public Health Commission employee accused of soliciting sex online from a minor told the Herald yesterday that he only wanted a massage when he answered an ad taken out by an undercover cop posing as a 15-year-old girl.

Jeanclaude Quach, a 36-year-old data analyst and married father of two, was arrested in a police sting Monday.

“I answered the ad because the girl said she was 18, and I wanted a massage,” Quach said yesterday after his Dorchester District Court arraignment. “I never said the word ‘sex.’ She said we can do this and that, and in my last e-mail, I think I said, ‘Sure.’ I couldn’t turn her away. . . . Right now, all I care about is my family.”

Quach arranged to meet the “girl” at Papa Gino’s on Gallivan Boulevard at 7:30 p.m. Monday, police said. Shortly after 7, the defendant arrived in a white BMW, looked in the pizzeria’s window, used an ATM next door and circled the block several times before officers dialed his cell phone, police said. He answered and was arrested moments later on Minot Street.

Quach pleaded not guilty to enticement of a child, posted $2,500 bail and was released, pending a June 1 hearing, on the condition that he stay away from children younger than 16, other than his own.

Quach, who has worked for the public health commission since 2002, was placed on administrative leave, with pay, from his $77,841-a-year job, said Christian Nielsen, a commission spokesman.

Lisa Goldblatt Grace, program director for My Life, My Choice, which works to prevent and intervene in the commercial sexual exploitation of girls, said the average age of entry into the industry is between 12 to 15 years old.

“We know that the old notion of the commercial sex industry as a victimless crime is not accurate,” said Goldblatt Grace. “The industry is replete with victims. And when someone makes the choice to buy sex, they are doing enormous harm.”

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1328696