A former Guilford County area charter school teacher has been sentenced in connection with a 2020 arrest for possession of child pornography.

UPDATE: Christian Dean Hall was convicted on July 2, 2021, on one count of disseminating child pornography. Hall pleaded guilty to the charge in 2020. He was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison.

According to a report by the Charlotte Observer, prosecutors said“Hall admitted he knew the videos were inappropriate and that it was illegal to share them,” and “Hall stated he knew he would lose his teaching license if his employer found out about these activities.”

Hall did not have a North Carolina teaching license.

Christian Dean Hall, age 35, has been sentenced to 188 months (15 and a half years) in prison for the distribution of child pornography.

The case is part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative by the Department of Justice to combat online child sexual exploitation and abuse.

No image of Hall was made available by law enforcement.

Court filings detail Hall was indicted Oct. 27, arrested the next day, and was subsequently held without bond per request by prosecutors.

Hall entered a plea of guilty on December 17, 2020. According to the plea agreement, Hall was found using the screen name “chris32033″ by an undercover agent on the Kik Messenger app. He was identified in a Kik group called “#dadboyangel” sometime in April of 2020.

Excerpt from the press statement issued by the Department of Justice’s U.S. Attorney’s Office  for the Middle District of North Carolina:

According to court documents, in April, 2020, an online covert employee (OCE) encountered Hall after graphic messages were sent in a group chat on the app Kik. After engaging directly with Hall, the OCE asked Hall if he had any child pornography in his collection. In response, Hall sent multiple videos to the OCE containing child pornography. Investigators obtained Hall’s name, email, and address and discovered that he was a Visual Arts teacher at Gate City Charter Academy in Greensboro.

Upon execution of a search warrant at Hall’s residence in Greensboro, agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigations discovered hundreds of photos and videos containing child pornography on multiple accounts and devices. After initially denying that he was part of the conversation with the OCE, Hall later admitted sharing graphic content involving minors despite knowing that it was illegal to do so.

The press release states he was a Visual Arts teacher at Gate City Charter Academy located in Greensboro in Guilford County. Charter schools are public schools in North Carolina. The school has not yet responded to requests for comment.

There is no teaching license on file for Hall with the state of North Carolina and, although his arrest was made in 2020, it was unreported until his sentencing. Hall is therefore the fifteenth public education employee arrest tracked by this website in 2021.

The teacher license disciplinary page maintained by the State Board of Education has been moved and now resides at the following web address:
https://www.dpi.nc.gov/about-dpi/state-board-education/legal-affairs/revoked-license

Additionally, the log of disciplinary actions has been reformatted and now has a search function and the ability to export the data. The sort feature does not work properly when sorting by the date due to the month/day/year format still being used and the fact that the entries now span dozens of pages.

As of this article, the discipline page has 993 records.  The following licenses have had action taken in 2021 as of July 3: