Former McCreary County Assistant Principal Sentenced for Attempted Online Enticement of a Minor

LONDON, Ky. - A Strunk, Ky., man, and former Assistant Principal of McCreary County High School, Aaron Anderson, 52, was sentenced on Thursday by U.S. District Judge Robert Wier to 120 months in prison, for attempting to persuade a minor to engage in unlawful sexual activity online.

According to court documents, in August 2023, Anderson was the McCreary County High School Assistant Principal, an began communicating with the minor victim via Microsoft Teams on the victim's school-issued Chromebook. Anderson and the victim spoke daily on Teams, and Anderson engaged in a pattern of grooming via the Teams messages that included terms of endearment, offers of gifts, and frequent praise to the minor victim. The grooming messages were part of the enticement as they were intended to flatter her, build intimacy, and create a sense of obligation. Furthermore, in his plea agreement, Anderson admitted to enticing the victim to engage in sexual contact in his office.

Under federal law, Anderson must serve 85 percent of his prison sentence. Upon his release from prison, he will be under the supervision of the U.S. Probation Office for 10 years.

Paul McCaffrey, First Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky; Olivia Olson, Special Agent in Charge, FBI, Louisville Field Office; and Phillip J. Burnett, Jr., Commissioner of the Kentucky State Police, jointly announced the sentence.

The investigation was conducted by the FBI and KSP. The U.S. Attorney's Office was represented in the case by Assistant U.S. Attorney Justin Blankenship.

The U.S. Attorney's Office prosecuted this case as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. 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 https://www.projectsafechildhood.gov.

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