Charles Evans Hall Jr. (Laurel County Correctional Center)
LONDON, KY – A Letcher County Middle School teacher was convicted late Wednesday, by a federal jury sitting in London, of producing child pornography and cyberstalking a student.
The jury convicted Charles Evans Hall Jr., 48, after 30 minutes of deliberations, following a three-day trial.
According to the evidence at trial, Hall 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 Kentucky State Police (KSP) seized Hall’s cell phone on November 20, 2018. Despite that, Hall still used Instagram to engage in cyberstalking. Hall repeatedly contacted the victim, asking her to destroy evidence, and ultimately threatened the child when she did not help him do so. KSP then arrested Hall on November 30, 2018. Despite that, Hall 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.
Carlton S. Shier, IV, Acting United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky; Jodi Cohen, Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Louisville Division; and Col. Phillip Burnett, Jr., Commissioner of the Kentucky State Police, jointly announced the jury’s verdict.
The investigation was conducted by the FBI and the Kentucky State Police Electronic Crimes Branch. The United States was represented in the case by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jenna E. Reed.
Hall will appear for sentencing on February 22, 2022. He faces a maximum of 35 years in prison. However, the Court must consider the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and the applicable federal sentencing statutes before imposing the sentence.
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse, launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys' Offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.
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