School employee charged in Federal indictment

An employee of the West Plains, R-7 School District has been charged in federal court with soliciting children to send him sexually explicit photos and videos through Snapchat and Instagram. 29-year-old Cody Ashton Ary of West Plains, a paraprofessional for the school district was charged with one count of producing child pornography.

According to an affidavit filed in support of the federal criminal complaint, Instagram initiated a CyberTip with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children on Dec. 3, 2019, after Ary is accused of uploading a sexually explicit video of an 8-to-10-year-old boy to his account. Investigators found a total of 92 chat conversations between Ary and other Instagram users. According to the affidavit, Ary, identified himself as a 15-year-old boy and used the screen name “15anime_boy” to other users, asking underage boys to send him sexually explicit videos and images. Ary allegedly received dozens of images and videos of child pornography through his Instagram account. Ary is in federal custody.