Federal Charges Filed In Lubbock For Online Exploitation Case

A Lubbock man is still behind bars after being accused of sexually exploiting a young girl. 32-year-old Joel Kenady was arrested in the 1200 block of East Cardwell Street on Thursday, March 7, on federal charges.

KAMC news reports that back in February at a middle school in Corpus Christi a student spoke with Homeland Security during a presentation stating her friend was in a relationship with an adult. Homeland Security special agents identified the victim to speak with her who stated she had begun a relationship through text with Kenady. This is after the victims friend, related to Kenady, had the two in the same group chat and from there entered into a private texting relationship.

The victim told agents that her and Kenady began talking about sexual topics in messages, which were also found on a iPad, from December 2023 and January 2024. Those 30,000 messages contained various explicit topics such as Kenady asking the victim about her virginity, nude photos, sexually explicit videos and other graphic topics. Kenady at one point told the victim he would get a hotel room and bring Plan B along with trying to coerce the victim Kenady told her she seemed 28-years-old mentally.

Kenady did tell the victim that he had a wife and children making her realize that she was being taken advantage of by an adult. The victim told Kenady that jail was just a place after trying to justify their age difference by stating age was just a number. In those messages that agents discovered Kenady told the victim he knew what he was doing could land him in prison and that he would have to register as a sex offender if caught.

As per the publishing of this article Kenady remains in the Lubbock County Detention Center on federal charges of Coercion and Enticement of a Minor and Sexual Exploitation of a Minor. There is no set bound for Kenady's release due to him being on a federal detainer.