WQXE News
A Hardin County man is in custody on child sexual abuse charges.
Joseph Blake Bowling of Elizabethtown faces 10 counts of Class C Felony Distribution of Matter Portraying a Sexual Performance by a Minor Under 12-Years-Old following his arrest Thursday.
According to the Kentucky State Police, Bowling was arrested as the result of an undercover Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force investigation. The KSP Electronic Crime Branch began an investigation of Bowling after it was discovered he was allegedly sharing images of child sexual exploitation online. Bowling was interviewed by investigators on April 10, and equipment used to facilitate the crime was seized and taken to a forensic laboratory for examination. Bowling was placed under arrest following the interview.
Bowling was lodged in the Hardin County Detention Center, where he is being held on a $250,000 cash bond. He is due to appear for a video arraignment Monday morning. The KSP’s investigation is ongoing.
After being out of commission for a week, activity is set to return at the Hardin County Justice Center.
“The Hardin County Justice Center will be reopening on Monday, April 14 after having been closed for flooding that we had as a result of the rain event, and we were closed for a week because of that,” said Hardin Chief Circuit Court Judge David John Simcoe.
Simcoe thanked State Representative Steve Bratcher and State Senator Matt Deneen for helping get assistance from the state to help get the justice center ready for reopening.
Despite reopening, work on the justice center is ongoing.
“The remediation process in the basement is probably going to continue for about three weeks,” Simcoe said. “We had a lot of files in the basement as well as some mechanical stuff, and so we’ve had to have some inspections done. We are having the files removed, cleaned, and they will ultimately be returned to us through Servpro.”
The courts are rescheduling cases that were affected by the closing.
“Anyone who had court will be receiving a court notice of their new trial date or their new court appearance date, and they should be getting those, probably, in the next week or two,” Simcoe said. “No bench warrants or failure to appears will have been issued as a result of missing court last week.”
Anybody with questions should contact the circuit clerk’s office or their attorney.