West Virginia school teacher arrested for asking students, 14 and 12, to send nude photos to juvenile boys
LOGAN COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA: A West Virginia middle school teacher has been arrested and charged after he was accused of soliciting two young girls and asking for their nude photographs.
Cameron Gerald Bookman, 27, a band teacher at the Chapmanville Middle School, first came to the attention of the West Virginia State Police last month, according to WYMT.
Capt. Shannon Oglesby, a spokesperson for the State Police confirmed one of their officers had received a complaint from a 14-year-old girl and her family on January 13, and that the complaint involved the solicitation of students at her school.
Documents filed in connection to the case state Bookman created a chat group on a social messenger on March 17 last year that included him, the 14-year-old victim and another 12-year-old student.
The victim told police the group had been set up so they could communicate about a band trip they were taking to Beckley, but that Bookman continued to send messages even after the trip was done.
She said, in some of these messages, the 27-year-old asked her to send nude photographs of herself to other juvenile boys and have those young boys then send nude photos of themselves back to her.
Officers said he was also accused of asking other "inappropriate questions," though they did not detail what these supposed questions were.
Bookman was arrested Thursday, February 6, at the Logan County Board of Education Office, and according to a criminal complaint filed in Logan County Magistrate Court, he admitted to asking the victim to send nudes to other students at the school.
However, he insisted he had asked the questions in a "joking matter." He told officers he spoke to both, the 14-year-old and the 12-year-old because they "were all friends."
He was subsequently charged with multiple counts of attempted solicitation of a minor for child pornography and is currently being held in the South Central Regional Jail on a $100,000 cash-only bond.