Henderson man faces new charges after winning dismissal in sexual coercion case

Federal prosecutors obtained a new, more clearly defined indictment Tuesday charging a Henderson computer technician with coercing a teenager over the Internet into having sex.

Last month U.S. District Judge Andrew Gordon dismissed a previous coercion indictment against Kenneth Wescott after Wescott argued it failed to explain what sexual activity had occurred and specify what laws might have been broken.

Wescott, 53, a married grandfather, was acting as his own attorney.

The 2014 indictment alleged only that Wescott tried to get a teenager to “engage in sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense under federal, state and local law.”

In a rare decision in favor of a defendant representing himself, Gordon agreed that Wescott, who has been in custody since his January 2014 arrest, had no way of defending himself against an indictment lacking factual allegations.

In the new indictment, prosecutors filed the same federal coercion charge, but this time cited several Nevada sex statutes they say cover Wescott’s conduct.

Wescott was one of several defendants charged in federal and state court last year after undercover stings set up by detectives assigned to an FBI-led task force to combat sexual exploitation of children.

A Henderson detective posing as a 13-year-old girl answered a Craigslist ad placed by Wescott seeking sex with women, police said. After sexually explicit email conversations with the detective in late December 2013 and early January 2014, Wescott was arrested in a shopping center parking lot where he thought he was about to meet a girl, according to the documents.

Wescott was unemployed at the time.

Contact Jeff German at jgerman@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-8135. Find him on Twitter: @JGermanRJ