Ky. middle school teacher convicted of producing pornography involving student
A federal jury has found a Letcher County Middle School teacher guilty of producing child pornography and cyberstalking the student he victimized in a case dating back to 2018.
Charles Evans Hall, 48, “persuaded a child to setup a secret Snapchat account. Hall then manipulated the child into creating and transmitting sexually explicit pictures and videos over a seven-month period. Hall used physical molestation to coerce and entice the minor into producing additional images,” the U.S. U.S. Attorney’s Office in London said in a news release.
The victim was a 14-year-old student, the Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg previously reported.
On Nov. 20, 2018, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said, Kentucky State Police seized Hall’s cell phone, but after that, he continued to stalk the girl online, using Instagram to “repeatedly” contact her, ”asking her to destroy evidence,” and when she didn’t help him, he threatened her.
After Hall was arrested by state police on Nov. 30, 2018, he “had his cellmate communicate with a co-conspirator, outside of the jail, to continue the cyberstalking campaign against the child, using Facebook Hall told the victim to make another statement to law enforcement, to clear him of the charges. Hall also used his mother’s public Facebook page to relay messages to the victim,” the release states.
After a three-day trial, a jury deliberated for 30 minutes before finding Hall guilty on Wednesday the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in the release. Hall is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 22. He faces up to 35 years in prison.
