Arkansas man who claimed texts were bid to catch child predator convicted

Robert Nathan Hensley
Robert Nathan Hensley

A mostly female jury deliberated about an hour and a half Tuesday before finding Robert Nathan Hensley, 57, a twice-convicted child sex offender from Cabot, guilty of three charges stemming from an online FBI sting operation in October 2017.

The charges were attempted enticement of a minor, attempted production of child pornography and possession of child pornography, for which he will be sentenced at a later date.

In a trial that began last week in Little Rock before U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright, Hensley, a divorced father and grandfather, contended that the text messages he exchanged with undercover FBI agents were misconstrued.

The agents posted an ad on Oct. 12, 2017, on Craigslist titled "young, fresh, petite," which Special Agent John Sablatura testified was meant to appeal to child predators and attracted hundreds of responses. He said the agents zeroed in on Hensley, whose responses were indicative of a true predator, beginning an 18-hour off-and-on conversation, much of it involving vulgar language that is common in the world of online sex solicitations.

Hensley began by asking, "What r u into," prompting the response, "Not much I'm not willing to do."

The agents pretended to be a man traveling through Conway, en route from Texas to Tennessee with his 14-year-old daughter, who was available for sex, for the right price.

Hensley claimed he only responded to the ad because he believed it was advertising sex with someone at least 18 years old. He said that after it became clear that the female being offered was only 14, he began to alternately suspect he was communicating with either police or predators. But he said he eventually agreed to meet the father and daughter at his house, arguing that he planned to get photographs of them and their vehicle to send to a human trafficking hotline.

But assistant U.S. attorneys Kristin Bryant and John Ray White said it was Hensley's "sexual appetite," and not a sense of duty, that led him to participate in the discussion. During it, he bragged about having a homemade sex machine that he wanted to use on the girl, described how he could tie her up and "work her over," and called himself "a Dom" in the game of sexual domination and submission who was willing to pay $150 for an hourlong session with the girl or even buy her for $3,000 and give her "a lifetime of bondage and sex."

Defense attorney Latrece Gray said in closing arguments Tuesday that the coarse language and descriptions Hensley used were simply his effort to get down to the predators' level. She said his words weren't meant to be taken literally but were all part of an adult-only hobby that he regularly participates in online, sometimes with only the intention to chat and engage in fantasies and other times with the intention to meet up with a prostitute.

The prosecutors said Hensley committed the crime of attempted production of child pornography when he asked his online correspondent to send him a nude picture of the girl, with a focus on certain body parts.

The agents responded to Hensley's request by saying, "You want the goods you have to pay for it. I'm not sending you child porn for you to turn me in."

Hensley replied, "LOL, yep didn't get your name. Officer who?"

When the agents instead sent a picture of a fully clothed girl, Hensley replied, "She looks at least 18," and the agents said they had other customers and cut off the conversation.

But hours later, now on Oct. 13, 2017, the agents revived the conversation by answering Hensley's last message -- a quip that "Ark jail has room for you."

The agents then taunted Hensley, who had sent a photograph of himself in a text. They told him the girl "would give your old ass a heart attack."

Eventually, Hensley agreed to meet the father and daughter at a busy Exxon in Cabot, where Hensley said he regularly parked his heating and air conditioning van to advertise his company while he organized invoices and surfed the Internet. Hensley acknowledged giving his correspondent a fake description of his vehicle so he could sit back and watch the correspondent's vehicle -- a white Chrysler 300 with tinted windows-- drive through looking for him. He urged the father to let the girl out, so he could see her, but then drove off when the agents told him he had missed it.

Later, Hensley texted his home address to the undercover officers, agreeing to meet the father and daughter there to perform a sex act on the father. Instead, the agents stopped Hensley at an intersection and arrested him.

A search of his laptop, which he kept at home in his camper next to his business, uncovered three images of child pornography, leading to the possession charge. But an FBI computer expert testified that a computer cleaning program had been activated early that morning, either automatically or by Hensley, thus erasing any other images that might have been unearthed from the hard drive.

Metro on 03/06/2019

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