For the fourth time in three months, a suspect was charged with enticing a child for indecent purposes and booked at the Baldwin County Jail.
This time around, Gregory Clinton Benton was detained inside the Milledgeville Mall and subsequently arrested. Benton, 72, is accused of “asking a 15-year-old if he could look up her skirt,” according to Maj. Brandon Sellers with the Milledgeville Police Department.
“Basically, we got a call up to TJ Maxx. There was a witness to the incident,” Sellers said. “Mr. Benton is a frequent flyer at businesses on that side of town.”
Benton has been trespassed from several northside businesses, including Kroger, where he was arrested in 2022 and charged with criminal trespass. Benton also was arrested for criminal trespass twice in 2024, but that’s the extent of his criminal history at the county jail.
The three other recent arrests for enticing a child for indecent purposes centered around internet chats, and those involved Youtube vigilante groups who work to identify potential child sex predators.
Enticing a child for indecent purposes is a felony and carries a minimum 10-year prison sentence. In instances in which the criminal case isn’t as “strong,” however, suspects often plea guilty to a lesser charge.
Currently, about 90 people in Georgia are serving prison sentences with enticing a child for indecent purposes listed as their “primary charge,” according to the Department of Corrections’ database.