A Council Bluffs man that worked as a foreign exhange student coordinator and host parent was sentenced on Thursday, August 12th in US District Court to 327 months in prison for Coercion and Enticement of minor foreign exchange students. 52-year-old Thomas Donald Boatright pleaded guilty to the offenses in February of 2021. His prison term will be followed by 10 years of supervised release and he was ordered to pay restitution to the minor victims.

Boatright led a program where students from other countries enrolled in a year of high school in the United States and were assigned a host family to live with while they attended high school. A report was made by a student in February 2020 after they discovered a hidden camera in the bathroom of Boatright’s home. A search warrant recovered numerous electronic devices that contained many videos of three minor foreign exchange students in the bathroom. A further investigation determined that Boatright used his cell phone and computer to communicate with foreign exchange students prior to their arrival and those conversations were sexual in nature. Boatright used his position as a foreign exchange student coordinator and host parent to coerce and entice foreign students to engage in sexual activity after they arrived in the United States.

The case was investigated by the Council Bluffs Police Department, Iowa DCI, FBI, and the US Secret Service National Computer Forensics Institute provided training and equipment.