Naugatuck Man Arrested On

Risk Of Injury Charge

Police this week arrested an eighth man in a continuing series of separate investigations into alleged Internet predators, charging the man with criminal attempt to commit risk of injury or impair the morals of a minor.

On the morning of March 26, police arrested Gerald Arsenault, Jr, 45, of Naugatuck on that charge on a warrant.

“This investigation involved communications through the use of computers,” police said in a statement.

After taking Arsenault into custody, police held him on $50,000 bail and transported him to Danbury Superior Court for arraignment.

Arsenault was being held this week on that amount of bail at the Bridgeport Correctional Center.

Police Chief Michael Kehoe said that Arsenault’s arrest was similar to seven men’s previous separate arrests that police have made since last August. 

In those arrests, police have posed as a nonexistent underage person on the Internet with whom the men unknowingly interacted in setting up a meeting with the nonexistent minor.

Since last August, police have arrested men from Naugatuck, Bethel, Stratford, Cromwell, Weston, Southbury, Woodbury, and Bloomfield 

Chief Kehoe has acknowledged that there have been no actual underage persons as victims of the alleged Internet predators, but only a police officer or officers who have been posing as such underage persons on the Internet in seeking to make arrests.

Police have sought to arrest Internet predators to prevent them from potentially coming into physical contact with actual underage victims, the police chief has said.