Indecent Exposure

Your beaches. Your parks. Your tax dollars at work. But in the natural beauty of it all is a dirty little secret. These public lands are magnets for sexual deviants. Men looking for men and young teens to fondle and gratify. They meet places like the Peck's Lake Park parking lot in Hobe Sound.

"If a child were to walk up on something like that it would be really traumatic."

said Martin County Sheriff's office Deputy Dan D'Agostino, who poses undercover as bait.

during stings. He says the men arrested do not defend their sexual actions."They tell me that its a sickness."

How do the men proposition others in broad daylight? "That gentlemen would walk out of car into the bathroom and I would follow a little ways behind him, "D'Agostino says."Once we're both in the stall, he on one side--- me on the other-- and there's hole between the two stalls...once sex organs are exposed...it is a crime."

The current public lewd exposure statute charge is only a misdemeanor that can send you to jail for a year with a one thousand dollar fine. But it's not just happening behind closed doors...deputies are busting public gratifiers on public park walkways..even the beach boardwalk and always in broad daylight. Each sweep nets dozens of men and most don't come back to the parks where they were busted.

One exception is Palm City's Tommy Lamb, who was arrested in April for exposing and gratifying himself to a deputy and then rearrested this month for the same exact thing in a public park.

Lt. Jenell Atlas says they do not try to stop men from meeting men in Martin county, "but we step in when its illegal activity, and men masturbating in the park in the daytime is illegal activity."

Atlas says the profile for these men is that all are over 40, white and most are married.

In fact, a former Martin County Sheriff's Captain and current State Representative Bill Snyder proposed a bill to stiffen penalties for lewd exposure in parks, beaches, and near schools this year. House Bill 269 would have made lewd public exposure a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

Snyder says the bill was shut down by the nudist lobby, but he will reintroduce the bill since the numbers of men exposing themselves is alarming. To find out how bad it is out here..we send out a decoy at Bob Graham Beach in Jensen Beach, Chad takes a hidden camera and sits on the bench. Within 5 minutes, in plain view on the boardwalk, he's approached and asked to perform oral sex...and this man we won't identify asks our decoy Chad bluntly, "You looking for some action? I'd like to touch your %^&*. I love $%^&*."

Chad identifies himself part of a News 12 crew..and his new friend runs off. A second man approaches Chad 5 minutes later...With little provocation the man takes off his shirt, and asks if our decoy will perform a sex act on him. The man's only concern is the police will see him.

News reporter Jana Eschbach then confronts the man with a camera before he takes any more clothes off. "You wouldn't want to say anything?" our decoy asks. "I am not interested," says the man who just propositioned Chad. Jana then asks, "Sir what was that about? why would you ask him to perform oral sex on you?" The man, now running away, answers "I didn’t. I didn’t ask him that." Jana says, "Actually you did sir."

Our decoy Chad could sit out here all day wearing a polo shirt and cargo shorts, but after being propositioned by 2 men in 10 minutes..you get the picture and you wouldn’t want to walk up on this.

Deputy D'Agostino agrees, "That is why the sheriff's office is strongly working the parks and beaches where parents would come with their young kids."