A California woman has become the first female in Texas history to be declared a Sexually Violent Predator.
The case against 37-year-old Desiree Hamm goes back to 2009 when prosecutors say she made contact with minors online and proceeded to groom them through role-playing games.
Eventually, those games became sexual. Authorities say that Hamm, then 22, was able to brainwash two teenage girls into believing that the games were real. Hamm would continue the abuse by monitoring her victims on webcams that she sent them.
Hamm was sentenced in 2011 and this week, a jury in Comal County, Texas, just north of San Antonio, was tasked with examining her case ahead of her application for parole.
Forensic psychologist Dr. Jason Dunham told the jury that Ham’s MO is very different from typical female sexual offenders, opining that she was more similar to a cult leader.
Dunham added that Hamm would be extremely likely to re-offend if she was ever released.
Hamm even admitted this week in court that during her time in prison, she participated in role-play games with pen pals while also shifting the blame for her original crimes onto another woman as well as the victims.
When Ham completes her original sentence, she will be transferred to the Texas Civil Commitment Office where she will undergo long-term sex offender treatment and supervision for an indefinite time.
Hamm pleaded guilty in 2011 to 13 counts of sexual abuse of a child and aggravated kidnapping.
“After spending hundreds of hours on the phone and the computer with the girls,” the DA’s office said in a press release.
“Hamm also used dominance and manipulation tactics to isolate the girls’ from their families; sent the girls secret cell phones, computers, pills and gifts;” and “preyed upon their naivety and violated their innocence while she watched on a webcam,” the release went on.
Hamm is then accused of using another adult woman to organize a trip from San Diego to Texas to abduct the teen girls.
The pair took the minors, holding them in the trunk of the car for part of the journey, to California.
Investigators were quickly led to Hamm through cell phones left behind by the girls. The sex offender lied to authorities and then moved the teens from San Diego to Fresno.
