Convicted sex offender is charged with soliciting teen girl for sex from behind bars

A convicted sex offender has been charged with trying to set up a sexual encounter with a 15-year-old girl at a southwest Ohio county fair, soliciting her while he was imprisoned in the Lorain Correctional Institution on a parole violation earlier this year. Zachary Foulke, 37, of Springfield in Clark County, was indicted Thursday on 22 counts of importuning, all felonies, and one count of grooming, a misdemeanor, in Lorain County Common Pleas Court. Arrested by the State Highway Patrol in July, Foulke was being held in the Lorain County Jail on $200,000 cash bond, according to court records. A message seeking comment on the indictment was left Friday for his attorney. Under Ohio law, importuning is the crime of soliciting a minor for sexual activity, while grooming is enticing, coercing, soliciting or preparing a minor for sexual activity. Chief Assistant Lorain County Prosecutor Chris Pierre said Foulke was on post-release control, formerly known as parole, from his prison sentence when he met the then-14-year-old stepdaughter of one of his friends at the 2024 Clark County Fair. Pierre said Foulke was imprisoned — in the Lorain Correctional Institution, according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction — starting in January on a post-release control violation. That violation happened after Foulke was arrested when he allegedly used children to help steal goods from a Walmart, Pierre said. Throughout that month, then into May and June of this year and all from prison, Foulke communicated with the girl, now 15, through two separate online accounts. Pierre said Foulke and the girl exchanged 8,528 messages online, at least eight of them being sexually explicit. They also spoke on the phone 1,482 times between Jan. 7 and July 3, he said. The messages, Pierre said, were leading up to a planned sexual encounter between Foulke and the girl at the 2025 Clark County Fair, which was July 24-31 in Clark County, near Dayton and about 100 miles southwest of Lorain County. According to Pierre, the girl "was hoping to get pregnant by (Foulke) and hoping to be emancipated on her 16th birthday." Before that could happen, the girl's biological father learned that she had been communicating with Foulke and reported the communications to prison authorities, Pierre said. He said the State Highway Patrol, which has jurisdiction over alleged crimes on state property, investigated the case. Foulke was convicted of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor and pandering obscenity involving a minor, both felonies, in Clark County Common Pleas Court in 2017. He was sentenced to four years in prison, according to court records. Foulke also was labeled a Tier II sex offender who must register in person with his local sheriff's office every 180 days for 25 years. In that case, Foulke's father called police to report finding a photo of a child posed in a sexual manner on his son's computer, the Dayton Daily News reported at the time. Officers investigating that crime uncovered evidence Foulke had a sexual relationship with another child victim. Foulke admitted to police he engaged in sexual activity with a 13-year-old girl, the newspaper reported. He also has felony convictions for arson in 2011 and breaking and entering in 2014, both in Clark County, according to a search of records there. Contact Dave O'Brien at (440) 329-7129 or dobrien@chroniclet.com.