Oregon high school principal arrested on child sex crime charges

An Oregon high school principal has been arrested on child sex crime charges. Jeremy Peter Williams, 49, of Longview, Washington, was taken into custody on Tuesday for allegedly producing and distributing child sexual abuse material, also known as child pornography. He is the principal of Rainier Junior/Senior High School located in Rainier, Oregon.

The Cowlitz County Sheriff's Office said a search warrant was executed at Williams' home on September 16. Investigators seized his phones, computers, and digital storage devices. Detectives received multiple referrals on August 28 from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), which alerted authorities to the trafficking of child sexual abuse material.

The information came from social media sites, which reported multiple images with hash matches to known child pornography being sent and received by accounts linked to Williams, the sheriff's office said in a press release. Hash matching is a digital process where a unique "hash" is generated for a digital file using a hash function. The hash is then compared against a database of known hashes. 

Williams was booked into the Cowlitz County jail on charges of dealing in depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct and possession of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct. Jail records show Williams bonded out on Wednesday, September 17. His bail was set at $100,000.

According to the school district, Williams was on paid administrative leave for an unrelated issue during the time of his arrest. The sheriff's office stated that there was no evidence to suggest that any students in his district were involved.