Toby Studebaker is a former

U.S. Marine The United States Marine Corps (USMC), also referred to as the United States Marines, is the maritime land force service branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for conducting expeditionary and amphibious operations through com ...

who abducted a 12-year-old British girl in 2003 after grooming her via the Internet and was jailed for four and a half years.
Ex-marine jailed for abduction
',

BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...

, April 2, 2004. Retrieved October 17, 2007.
Internet groomer faces 30 years
'

The Scotsman ''The Scotsman'' is a Scottish compact newspaper and daily news website headquartered in Edinburgh. First established as a radical political paper in 1817, it began daily publication in 1855 and remained a broadsheet until August 2004. Its pare ...

February 13, 2004. Retrieved October 17, 2007.Nigel Bunyan and Marcus Warren,
Paedophile escapes life for abduction
',

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was f ...

, February 13, 2004. Retrieved October 17, 2007. He was born in

Constantine, Michigan Constantine is a village in St. Joseph County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 2,076 at the 2010 census. The village is located within Constantine Township. U.S. Highway 131 (Main Street in the village) leads to Kalamazoo to t ...

in 1971, and trained in

North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and ...

with the 4th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, an

anti-terrorism Counterterrorism (also spelled counter-terrorism), also known as anti-terrorism, incorporates the practices, military tactics, techniques, and strategies that governments, law enforcement, business, and intelligence agencies use to combat or ...

unit. Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, he was posted to

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...

, where he helped guard

Taliban The Taliban (; ps, طالبان, ṭālibān, lit=students or 'seekers'), which also refers to itself by its state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalist, militant Islamist, jihadist, and Pasht ...

and al-Qaeda suspects at

Kandahar Kandahar (; Kandahār, , Qandahār) is a city in Afghanistan, located in the south of the country on the Arghandab River, at an elevation of . It is Afghanistan's second largest city after Kabul, with a population of about 614,118. It is the c ...

International Airport. He met Shevaun Pennington in July 2002 through

Neopets ''Neopets'' is a virtual pet website. Users can own virtual pets ("Neopets") and buy virtual items for them using one of two virtual currencies. One currency, called Neopoints, can be earned within the site, and the other, Neocash, can eithe ...

when she was 11 years old, though she had originally claimed to be 17. She left her home in

Leigh Leigh may refer to: Places In England Pronounced : * Leigh, Greater Manchester, Borough of Wigan ** Leigh (UK Parliament constituency) * Leigh-on-Sea, Essex Pronounced : * Leigh, Dorset * Leigh, Gloucestershire * Leigh, Kent * Leigh, Staf ...

Greater Manchester Greater Manchester is a metropolitan county and combined authority area in North West England, with a population of 2.8 million; comprising ten metropolitan boroughs: Manchester, Salford, Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Stockport, Tam ...

on July 12, 2003, telling her parents she was going shopping. However, they flew to

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

and stayed in a hotel for two days, where he raped her, before traveling to Strasbourg. They were gone a total of five days, but he was finally arrested in

Frankfurt Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , " Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on it ...

and

extradited Extradition is an action wherein one jurisdiction delivers a person accused or convicted of committing a crime in another jurisdiction, over to the other's law enforcement. It is a cooperative law enforcement procedure between the two jurisdi ...

to the UK in August. He

pleaded guilty In legal terms, a plea is simply an answer to a claim made by someone in a criminal case under common law using the adversarial system. Colloquially, a plea has come to mean the assertion by a defendant at arraignment, or otherwise in response ...

Manchester Crown Court Manchester Crown Court (Crown Square) is a Crown Court venue which deals with criminal cases at Crown Square in Manchester, England. History Until the 1940s, criminal court cases were heard at the Manchester Assize Courts. However, the assize ...

in front of Lord Justice Leveson to abduction and incitement to gross indecency, and was jailed for four and a half years on April 2, 2004. He was deported to the United States at the end of this sentence, where he was jailed for another 11 years and 4 months by the federal court in

Kalamazoo Kalamazoo ( ) is a city in the southwest region of the U.S. state of Michigan. It is the county seat of Kalamazoo County. At the 2010 census, Kalamazoo had a population of 74,262. Kalamazoo is the major city of the Kalamazoo-Portage Metropoli ...

, Michigan, in April 2008, for the same offense. He was also charged under American law with transporting a child across international boundaries for sexual exploitation. He received a concurrent sentence of 7 years and 11 months for possessing child pornography. According to an

affidavit An ( ; Medieval Latin for "he has declared under oath") is a written statement voluntarily made by an ''affiant'' or '' deponent'' under an oath or affirmation which is administered by a person who is authorized to do so by law. Such a stateme ...

filed in 1998 in

Michigan Michigan () is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the List of U.S. states and ...

, a 12-year-old relative complained that Studebaker fondled her while they were wrestling, but it was dropped during the preliminary proceeding.
Transcript: Toby Studabaker: Man With a Past?
',

CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...

, July 17, 2003. Retrieved on October 17, 2007. The case is credited with encouraging the creation of a law against child grooming over the Internet in

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...

,Eddie Barnes,
Paedophiles to face jail for sex grooming
'

, February 15, 2004. Retrieved October 17, 2007. after criticism that British courts were unable to consider offenses involving sexual intercourse because the activity happened abroad. David Harrower's play '' Blackbird'' was inspired by the events.Festival 2005: EIF Review
Edingburghguide.com, 2005. retrieved October 17, 2007.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Studebaker, Toby Living people 1971 births United States Marines American people imprisoned abroad Prisoners and detainees of the United States federal government Prisoners and detainees of England and Wales People deported from the United Kingdom People from Constantine, Michigan People extradited to the United Kingdom People extradited from Germany