May 22, 2021- 12:14 p.m.
A complaint from child services about a middle-aged man sending photos of naked women to an underage girl led investigators to a stash of secret recordings featuring dozens of students at a high school in Tennessee, officials say.
The suspect — 40-year-old Leon B. Hensley — was the school nurse, according to federal prosecutors.
Hensley was charged with attempting to produce child pornography in a criminal complaint unsealed Thursday in federal court, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Tennessee said. He was arrested near his home in Florida and was expected to make his first court appearance Thursday afternoon.
Prosecutors said he faces a minimum of 15 years in prison and a possible life sentence if convicted.
Hensley worked at Northeast High School in Clarksville, Tennessee, from August 2017 to November 2019, the government said. He was reportedly fired after the Department of Child Services reported him to local police when he was accused of sending inappropriate photos to a minor.
Northeast High School is just south of the Kentucky border in the Clarksville-Montgomery County School System. Administrators issued a statement on April 28 regarding the federal government’s investigation into Hensley.
“This former employee was terminated in November 2019 due to a CPD investigation at that time for exploitation of a minor,” the school district said. “CPD has informed CMCSS that law enforcement is currently contacting other potential victims. The safety and well-being of our students is our top priority, and CMCSS is fully cooperating with CPD as they investigate these heinous crimes.”
NAKED PHOTOS
The investigation into Hensley started with a photo of a naked woman wrapped in caution tape, according to an affidavit filed with the criminal complaint.
Hensley sent the picture to an underage girl in a conversation about a posing for a “photo shoot,” prosecutors said. Child services reported it to the Clarksville Police Department.
Investigators discovered Hensley worked as a nurse at Northeast High School and brought him in for an interview at the police station, according to the affidavit. He reportedly admitted to texting the girl and gave police permission to search his cell phone, where they found a folder of images showing “post-pubescent minor children’s exposed genitalia,” the affidavit states.
Further searches net a folder labeled “NEHS” containing random first names and naked pictures. Officials said detectives were able to match the photographs to students using the high school yearbook. When they interviewed the students, two said they thought they were sending the pictures to other students. The other three believed they were sent to a modeling agency.
“None of the child victims knew they were sending images to Hensley,” the affidavit states.
Police subsequently obtained a warrant to search Hensley’s house and seized several electronic devices — including a small black video camera the agent described as a “hidden spy camera.”
OVER 700 IMAGES FROM SINGLE BATHROOM
It reportedly took investigators months to sort through the trove of images on Hensley’s devices, some of which showed nude women and girls in hospital rooms and tanning beds, authorities said.
Police ultimately contacted the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to assist in the investigation in April, and agents uncovered at least 700 pictures and videos from a single bathroom where a hidden camera had been placed. In all of the images, the minor girls were “in various stages of undress and/or utilizing the bathroom facilities,” the HSI agent said in the affidavit.
The camera was also positioned “directly across and in front of the toilet seat, at toilet seat level,” he said.
Investigators linked the bathroom seen on the tapes to the private student restroom at the nurse’s station where Hensley worked at Northeast High School. At least 40 students have been identified in the pictures and videos — only half of which have been examined, officials said.
All of the students were between 12 and 18 years old.
Homeland Security also learned Hensley had previously worked as a nurse at Tennova Hospital and Healthcare in Clarksville, where investigators believe the hospital room pictures were likely taken.
Hensley is accused of attempting to delete all of the images after his interview with police in early November 2019 but before investigators searched his house.
