ALTON – An Alton Police investigation has led to a local man’s arrest after police found messages of him grooming and soliciting someone he believed to be a 14-year-old child.
Charles D. Sanders, 52, of Alton, was charged on Dec. 4, 2025, with one count each of indecent solicitation of a child (a Class 3 felony), solicitation to meet a child, and grooming (both Class 4 felonies).
From Oct. 17-25, 2025, Sanders allegedly knowingly solicited an individual he believed to be a 14-year-old child to perform a sexual act.
Charging documents state Sanders used a computer, cell phone, or other electronic device to solicit the supposed 14-year-old to meet him at his residence, with the meeting arranged for the unlawful purpose of criminal sexual abuse. He was additionally accused of using an online service to attempt to seduce, solicit, lure or entice the believed 14-year-old child to engage in the sexual act.
More details behind the investigation that led to Sanders’s arrest are contained in a petition to deny his pretrial release from custody, filed by the Madison County State’s Attorney’s Office. The Alton Police Department led the investigation after receiving a report on Nov. 10, 2025, of an individual “conversing with someone who he believed to be a 14-year-old male child and inviting him to his residence for the purpose of committing a sex act against the child.”
Alton police executed search warrants for Sanders’s residence and mobile carrier provider T-Mobile. Sanders was taken into custody on Dec. 2, 2025, and gave consent for officers to search his phone. The petition indicates text messages and messages via the Grindr application were found on Sanders’s phone between himself and an adult individual who was “posing as a 14-year-old male child.”
“In the messages, the individual posing as a 14-year-old male child clearly stated that he was 14 years old,” the petition states, adding that Sanders responded with a request to engage in a sexual act. “Further, he requested the person whom he believed to be a child to come to his residence and provided the address to his residence.”
The Alton Police Department presented the case against Sanders, who currently remains in custody at the Madison County Jail.
All individuals charged are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
