Woman helps champion new Pennsylvania law after her own childhood abduction

A convicted child sex offender who spent nearly two decades in prison after kidnapping a Pittsburgh teenager was recently convicted of similar crimes more than 20 years later. It came just a week before the Pennsylvania General Assembly passed a law named after the survivor.

For the past 24 years, Alicia Kozak had a distinct fear.

"It's always been that he was going to be released," Kozak said. "He was going to be back out in the world, and that was something that was always going to happen."

Known to many as Kozakiewicz, she was just 13 years old in 2002 when then-38-year-old Scott Tyree met her online and traveled to Pittsburgh to abduct her. He held her hostage in his basement in Virginia and sexually abused her for four days.

It wasn't until someone recognized her from missing person posters that she was rescued. It's now recognized as one of the first online predator cases in the country leading to child abduction.

"I can't change the past, but I can work to protect those in the future," Kozak said.

Ever since, she's worked to keep other families and children safe, finally celebrating the passage of Alicia's Law last month by the Pennsylvania General Assembly, since signed into law by Governor Josh Shapiro. It improves the state's ability to investigate and prosecute internet crimes against children with increased funding and tools for law enforcement.

However, just one week earlier, she was consumed once again with feelings of horror, seeing her offender in a Cumberland County courtroom.

"Had Alicia's Law been in place a few years ago, maybe this wouldn't have happened," Kozak said.

Sentenced to 19 years and seven months in Kozak's case, Scott was released after 17 years before violating his probation and finishing his sentence. He was then released again in Harrisburg.

It wasn't until Kozak's boyfriend, Eric Lind, happened to look Scott up and through social media found him in possession of images of a woman they learned Scott was stalking.

"Thankfully, we got to him really in the eleventh hour," Kozak said.

They notified police, who arrested and charged him. Scott pleaded guilty last year to stalking, and that week before Alicia's Law was passed, a jury found Scott guilty of child porn and criminal use of a communication facility. He now faces a mandatory minimum of 25 to 50 years in prison.

"He tried to kill me when he was 38, and he put me in a cage, and now I am 38, and I helped put him in a cage all these years later," Kozak said. 

Kozak said she now feels a sense of closure and justice, closing one chapter as she moves forward in another.

"The problem has only grown so much more, and we're finally, as a society, really waking up to that," Kozak said.

Scott will be back in court for his sentencing on January 21.