photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

The Douglas County Judicial and Law Enforcement Center is pictured on Dec. 2, 2025.

A Texas man targeted a 10-year-old Lawrence girl with sexually graphic messages and persuaded her to participate in an exchange of nude photos and videos, according to the man’s recently released arrest affidavit.

Dominik Smith, 21, of Irving, Texas, was charged in December 2025 with electronic solicitation of a child under the age of 14 and sexual exploitation of a child between 14 and 18 years old. Both offenses are alleged to have occurred three years ago in Douglas County.

Smith’s defense attorney, Michael Clarke, had asked a Douglas County judge to seal the affidavit, saying disclosure would likely lead to “widespread republication” of the explicit allegations and prejudice his client. Judge Sally Pokorny, however, publicly released the affidavit on Friday with some redactions of names, addresses and other personal information of the involved parties.

An arrest affidavit outlines why police believed they had probable cause to arrest an individual. Allegations in affidavits have not been proved in court.

Smith’s affidavit indicates that a Lawrence mother contacted a school resource officer to report that the phone of her 10-year-old daughter contained sexually explicit material and that the child had been in contact with an unknown male via Roblox, a popular online gaming platform.

During an interview at the Douglas County Child Advocacy Center, the girl said she met the man, later identified as Smith, on Roblox in December of 2022. He said he was 18, and he had been nice to her at first, the girl said, but after about a month he began sending her messages that made her uncomfortable. The man overcame her initial resistance to give him her phone number by saying she could trust him because they had now been “friends for a long time,” according to the affidavit.

The messages escalated from the man calling her “babe” to telling her sexually graphic acts he wished to engage in with her — acts that would constitute child rape — and saying he wanted to do it in person. He assumed she was a minor because of her reluctance to discuss her age, and he told the girl he did not want anyone to find out about their communications because he could get in trouble, the affidavit says.

An investigator who examined the girl’s phone found numerous messages of a sexual nature as well as audio clips and nude photos and videos of the man and the girl. The investigator also found messages from the girl making it clear that she was a pre-teen, and the images she sent “unquestionably depicted a pre-pubescent female,” according to the affidavit.

Police obtained a search warrant for the Roblox account and phone number associated with the man, which led them to Smith in Texas. Smith, according to the affidavit, had been contacting the girl via his mother’s T-Mobile account.

Smith’s next court appearance is a status conference scheduled for Feb. 18. He is currently in the Douglas County Jail on a bond of $500,000 cash or surety.