They met on an Internet chat site, the airman in Georgia and the girl in Iowa, half a continent away. Authorities said he used all the technology at his disposal to fashion a relationship: text messages, digital photos, online video chats, even a cell phone application that made his voice sound like a woman’s.
He flew her in for a month-long visit last year, showing her the Georgia Aquarium and the World of Coca-Cola, officials said. He allegedly convinced her father that he was the mother of her sick friend in Valdosta.
Senior Airman Gary Archer, stationed at Moody Air Force Base in south Georgia, went to elaborate lengths to engage in an illegal sexual relationship with the girl from Iowa, federal prosecutors allege. He is 28. She is 14.
Archer faces charges of crossing state lines to have sex with a child and with transporting her to Georgia for the same purpose. If convicted, he faces at least 10 years in prison and could receive a life sentence. Last week, a federal judge in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, ordered that Archer be held in jail without bond until his trial, scheduled for April 25.
Archer’s lawyer, Stephen Swift of Cedar Rapids, did not respond to a request for an interview.
Federal court documents -- at first filed under seal, but recently opened for public inspection -- describe in great detail the affair, which began in May 2010 and was discovered last August when the girl told her doctor’s nurse what had happened.
Archer, a native of Houston, joined the 723rd Aircraft Maintenance Squadron at Moody in 2008. His rank is the equivalent of sergeant.
From the beginning of their online contact, the girl told federal investigators, Archer knew how old she was -- because she told him.
Within days, court records say, Archer rented a car in Valdosta and drove 1,100 miles to Iowa, where he picked up the girl at her home. She told her father she was going camping with friends. Instead, prosecutors allege, Archer took her to a hotel in Cedar Rapids, where they had sex several times during a weeklong stay.
After Archer returned to Moody, he and the girl used their cell phones to exchange what an Air Force investigator later described as “sexual pictures.” They also used webcams for online video chats.
Shortly, court records say, Archer helped the girl concoct a story about a friend in Georgia who was ill. Prosecutors say Archer spoke to the girl’s father on the telephone, claiming to be the sick friend’s uncle. Later, according to court records, Archer used a cell phone application that distorted his voice to call the father, pretending to be the sick girl’s mother. The father allowed his daughter to make the trip.
She took a United Airlines flight to Atlanta on July 2.
For the rest of July, court records say, the girl stayed with Archer at his apartment in Valdosta, near the air force base, and had sex with him numerous times. The manager of Archer’s apartment complex later told police she had twice seen him with the girl at the pool, hugging and kissing and holding hands.
Archer drove the girl to Atlanta on July 30, took her sightseeing, and then checked into a hotel. She flew home the next day.
A few days later, the girl complained of stomach pains. When her father took her to the doctor, she confided in a nurse that she had been sexually active with an adult from Georgia, authorities said. In October, Air Force investigators searched Archer’s apartment, seizing computer equipment, cell phones and bank and credit card statements. Authorities arrested Archer on Jan. 31, and he has remained in jail since.
When Archer appeared in court last week, the Air Force asked for permission to return him to Moody so military physicians could perform a mental evaluation. U.S. Magistrate Jon S. Scoles refused, saying he found “no conditions or combinations of conditions which will reasonably assure the safety of the community or [Archer’s] appearance at future court proceedings if released.”
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