PANOLA COUNTY, Miss. — WREG has shocking details regarding allegations against a former kindergarten teacher’s assistant at South Panola Elementary School.
Benjamin Wilkes, 30, has been charged with possession of child pornography.
He’s the third North Mississippi teacher charged with child pornography in recent weeks.
On Monday, no one answered the door at a home in Courtland, Mississippi in Panola County, where agents served an arrest warrant for Benjamin Wilkes.
He was charged with possession and access with intent to view child pornography and transportation of child pornography.
“At first, I thought somebody might have had a death in the family or it was something else going on,” a neighbor said.
The neighbor, who didn’t want to be identified, saw an unusually large number of vehicles at the house.
“I was heading out, getting ready to go to work and just saw a lot of people over at the house,” the neighbor said. “A lot of cars, a lot of vehicles – [I] didn’t know what was going on at the time, but heard about it later on.”
Those vehicles belonged to multiple agencies, including Homeland Security and the Panola County Sheriff.
The affidavit of complaint against Wilkes was obtained by WREG.
The details are very graphic, but outline how investigators were alerted that two videos, depicting apparent child sexual abuse material, had been uploaded to Wilkes’ cell phone on March 2.
Wilkes admitted to visiting the website he knew contained child pornography.
In February, a Corinth Middle School teacher named Wilson Jones was charged with using AI to create fake pornographic videos of his students.
In early April, a DeSoto Central Elementary teacher named Mitchell Cantrell was charged with possessing child pornography.
A neighbor said children should be safe at school.
“Probably do better on background checks and stuff like that,” the neighbor said. “And probably monitor them more often.”
WREG has learned that Benjamin Wilkes is no longer employed with South Panola Schools and no students were involved.
Clay Joyner, the U.S. Attorney for the North District, declined to comment on cases currently being investigated.
