Kenneth Hall, a former administrative assistant in the Office of Residential Life and Learning, was convicted by a Suffolk County court this summer as a sex offender after he provided a cellular phone to a 12-year-old girl so that she could send him nude pictures.
Neither Human Resources nor Director of Residential Life and Learning Yolanda King would say when Hall began working at Tufts, but he was employed on campus for at least part of last year.
Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman said he is not sure when Hall left, but that he thinks it was before the end of the academic year.
Hall, age 47, is currently serving a two- to four-year sentence at the Massachusetts Correctional Institute at Cedar Junction to be followed by five years of probation.
"I can safely say that we're satisfied that justice was served and satisfied with the sentence imposed," said Jake Wark, a spokesperson for Suffolk County District Attorney Dan Conley's office.
The specific charges Hall was convicted of are: posing a child in a state of nudity, possession of child pornography, child enticement and possession of marijuana. He was acquitted of two counts of indecent assault and battery on a child.
Police first began investigating Hall in 2004, after he gave the girl, who he met the year before, the cellular phone.
According to Wark, the girl told an adult about the phone. A police investigation ensued and led to a grand jury investigation. Hall was then arraigned on Nov. 1, 2004. His trial, which lasted three days, did not begin until June of this year.
Wark said that the almost three-year delay was the result of "quiet, thorough and meticulous investigations." These investigations turned up 23 images sent from the girl to Hall, according to a press release from Conley's office.
"Prosecutors believe that 10 to 15 of them depicted her nude body or portions of it, and the remainder showed her wearing only underwear," the release said.
Hall has filed notice of his intent to appeal the decision, but neither Wark nor Susan Church, the attorney who represented him at his trial, knows who his lawyer will be during the process. Wark said that Hall filed the appeal himself.
If his conviction holds up, he will have to abide by very specific conditions during the five years he is on probation following his release from prison.
These include going to sex offender treatment, registering as a sex offender, submitting his DNA for the state's database and not having any unsupervised contact with children under 18 (excluding members of his family), according to the press release.
