CHARLOTTE — The man accused of taking a Union County teen to Missouri appeared in federal court in Uptown Charlotte this week.
Christopher Porter is facing felony counts of sexual exploitation of a child and committing offenses with a minor while being a registered sex offender.
Porter is a federal inmate being held at the Gaston County jail. He was brought back to North Carolina on Wednesday.
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Investigators said last October, Porter drove from Oklahoma to pick up a Union County teen he met online and then convinced her to run away.
Detectives, family, and friends searched for the missing teen for nearly two weeks before police found her with Porter in a Walmart parking lot in Missouri.
Channel 9′s Jonathan Lowe spoke with the teenager’s father about how his family is healing.
“It’s some good days, it’s some really bad days,” he said. “Some days we do revisit that trauma. It’s just the thoughts of what if. If she wasn’t back, where would we be right now, mentally?”
He learned through FBI agents that Porter waived fighting extradition.
“It made us feel like, I think he knows his fate and he’d rather not fight it,” he said.
At the time of the alleged incident, Porter was classified as a low-risk sex offender.
“The intent that he made, driving so far to pick my daughter up and then take her back so many miles away, it was clear intent,” the teen’s father said. “And there is nothing low-risk about that.”
He says his family’s path to healing now includes taking action.
“Like most sex offenders, they know the law and what they can, and what they’re capable of,” he said. “So that’s really what we’re trying to get behind a campaign on, like what deems these people low-risk?”
Porter’s case is really just beginning. Throughout, the victim’s parents will see for themselves that their daughter gets justice.
“The healing’s going well, she’s getting the help that she needs, and we stay in constant prayer,” her father said. “Family has really kept us going.”
In court Wednesday, Porter pleaded not guilty.
(WATCH BELOW: Convicted sex offender charged after Union County teen found safe, police say)
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