An arrest warrant has been issued in Florida for a former FBI agent on a host of criminal charges, including sexual battery and exposing himself to a 14-year-old girl.
David Harris, 51, has already been charged in Louisiana and Texas with a variety of sex crimes against both minors and adults. CrimeOnline previously reported on his arrest in Louisiana, where he was charged in three separate parishes.
WCTV reported that the most recent arrest stemmed from a complaint filed earlier this year about an incident with a 14-year-old girl while Harris was on St George Island for a family vacation. During the course of the investigation, Franklin County Sheriff’s Office investigators obtained records of conversations on Harris’ government-issued electronic devices in which he said his sexual preference is for minor girls and admitted to several incidents, including the exposure incident.
Harris was arrested in June in Ascension Parish, Louisiana, where he was charged with aggravated crimes against nature and indecent behavior with children under the age of 13, but the investigation began in February when the Texas father of a victim sent a letter to the FBI Inspector General detailing incidents between his daughter and another teen girl and Harris. The letter also revealed that Harris had been having an affair with the man’s wife, KETK reported.
According to the arrest warrant, the victim’s mother told investigators “she believed that Mr. Harris had exposed his genitals to [her daughter] on past occasions, both at [her home] in Tyler and Mr. Harris’ residence in Louisiana.” The 14-year-old was initially reluctant to speak with investigators, but eventually told them about an incident in which Harris and his family were visiting in Texas. During a pool party, the girl didn’t feel well and went to lie down in her mother’s bedroom.
The teen said Harris came into the room, took off his pants and underwear, and laid down on top of her. She said she screamed for Harris’s wife, who was in another room, and Harris jumped up and redressed. The girl said she didn’t tell anyone about the incident until later, when she told a second alleged victim of Harris’s actions.
The Florida incident took place in July 2019, when the second victim accompanied the first victim’s family and Harris’s family on a Florida vacation. The girl said she was swimming in a pool when Harris suddenly arrived, stripped naked, and jumped in. When this girl told the first victim what happened, the first victim relayed her experiences with Harris.
Text messages between the first victim’s mother and Harris, found on Harris’s FBI-issued cell phone, showed the pair discussing the incidents over several, the arrest warrant says, although the mother never went to police and in fact apologized for bringing the incidents up.
Harris discusses his attraction to teenage girls in multiple texts, noting at one point he was glad the Florida vacation was over because “I got tired of all my talking to for being inappropriate and a dirty old man.”
“I mean they have to be in their teens. I’m not a weirdo,” he wrote. “Unless I move to Kentucky, where 16 is the age of consent.”
Harris remains in jail in Ascension Parish, but he has outstanding warrants on the charges in Tyler, Texas, Orleans and East Baton Rouge Parishes in Louisiana, and now in Franklin County, Florida.
The FBI says Harris, who during his tenure there investigated crimes against children, has been fired.
Harris’s attorneys say that Harris has had an exemplary record of service and that “many facts surrounding this investigation that differ significantly from the narrative law enforcement has disseminated through the media.”
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[Featured image: David Harris/Louisiana State Police]
