The Arkansas State Police last month fired a trooper who the agency said violated agency standards by messaging teen girls, one of whom said he sent her a naked photograph of himself, less than a year after he was disciplined for having a sexual relationship with two 18-year-old girls while on duty, records show.

Agency officials terminated Michael Valentin on Aug. 13 at the end of an internal investigation sparked by an anonymous complaint that stated he had been messaging a 15-year-old girl on Instagram late at night and had been bragging about how he had kept his job and even gotten a raise after a July 2023 investigation led to his transfer and a five-day suspension, according to disciplinary records.

“I am becoming increasingly concerned that Trooper Valentin did not learn his lesson,” the complainant wrote. “I am more so concerned that he is a predator grooming young girls. I am also worried that firing him could put so much stress on him that his behavior becomes more aggressive either in his attempts to speak

to underage girls or in a physical sense.”

The investigation of that complaint led to the identification of another woman whom Valentin messaged on Facebook and Snapchat when she was 17. She told state police Valentin sent her an unsolicited nude photo, something he denied in an interview with investigators.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette requested Valentin’s disciplinary files on Aug. 20 but did not receive the documents related to his termination until late Tuesday. State police spokeswoman Cindy Murphy said the delay was because Valentin had the right to appeal his firing, something he ended up not doing, which would have temporarily prevented the documents from being released under the state’s open-records law.

Investigators were able to identify the then-17-year-old, who said Valentin had a “verbal relationship” with her for a month or two, by speaking again with the two women with whom Valentin had a sexual relationship in late 2022, before the two 18-yearolds graduated high school.

That interaction, which the two women said was consensual but inappropriate when they submitted a complaint about it, led to the 2023 investigation and Valentin’s suspension.

The Instagram exchange happened overnight from April 19 to 20, with the 15-year-old girl saying Valentin messaged her around 11 or 11:30 p.m. noting that she was up late. She thought it was weird that he was messaging her, she said, even though she knew Valentin.

The conversation wasn’t sexual, the girl told investigators, but it seemed inappropriate for him to contact her that late, and her mother submitted a second complaint to state police a few days after the anonymous complaint that began the second internal investigation that led to Valentin’s termination.

“(The girl’s mother) told us she wonders if she needs to be worried about her daughter driving because she is concerned about her being preyed on if she were to get pulled over,” wrote Cpl. Christiana McKibben, who conducted interviews for both investigations.

While he was carrying on a relationship with the two 18-year-olds, Valentin did pull one of them over for a traffic violation and used the opportunity to talk to her about their relationship, the investigative file indicates, although nothing sexual happened at the time of that traffic stop.

As a result of Valentin’s actions, people in Boone County, where he has lived and worked as a trooper since 2015, have come to distrust him, McKibben said.

“Do you understand that the people in your community all think that you’re a predator?” McKibben asked him in a June 27 interview.

Valentin replied that the idea that people think he is predator “blows my mind.”

He denied that he is a pedophile, saying that women younger than 18 don’t interest him, although he is attracted to women younger than he is. In the June 27 interview, Valentin said he was 43. His date of birth had been redacted from the documents provided to the Democrat-Gazette.

“Younger girls, again 18 or older, uh, you know, most of them do look better than, you know, 30- or 40-year-olds,” Valentin told McKibben.

The teen who said Valentin sent her a nude photo when she was 17 told investigators that Valentin must have known her age, although he denied that to investigators.

“He knew how old I was,” she said. “He, he grew up around me. I’ve known him since I was in kindergarten.”

Like the two 18-year-olds, whom Valentin would meet in isolated areas to kiss and grope while on duty, even putting handcuffs on them in one instance, the teen who told investigators Valentin sent her a photo first encountered him while she was working at Hutch’s Hot Chicken in Harrison.

The restaurant is owned by another state trooper, Cpl. Jason Hutcheson, who Valentin said ceased talking to him after the actions that led to the first investigation came to light.

Valentin would stare at the teen’s bottom while she worked, she told investigators, prompting her to avoid him. Later, when he messaged her on Facebook, she told herself she would see if he said anything inappropriate and then provide screenshots of the bad behavior to someone in authority.

The interview does not state exactly when these interactions took place, but the young woman was a friend and coworker of the two 18-year-olds, and it would have been roughly concurrent with Valentin’s relationship with them, all three teens said.

When Valentin sent the then-17-year-old a nude photo, she broke off contact with him, she told investigators, but she never did anything with the screenshotted messages and eventually deleted them.

Valentin initially denied sending her a nude photo, though he eventually conceded that it was possible he sent her a photograph of himself shirtless.

In the June interview with McKibben, Valentin admitted to struggling with what he considers an addiction to pornography.

“Cpl. Valentin admitted his porn addiction has influenced his desire to reach out to females,” a summary of the investigative findings states. “Cpl. Valentin stated he probably looked at porn while at work in an isolated instance or two.”

In the first investigation, into his relationship with the two 18-year-olds, Valentin said he felt that his actions were sinful.

“I’m a Christian,” Valentin told McKibben. “I’m not perfect, obviously. I was raised in a church and I feel like at that time the devil had ahold of me.”

Valentin told the investigator he and his wife, whom he told about the relationship with the two 18-year-olds, had been doing some counseling through their church.

He deleted his Snapchat app before the first investigation began, he said, but acknowledged in the June interview that he had been talking to multiple women on social media. He struggled to put a number on the relationships.

“How many are there, Michael?” McKibben asked, before he denied that any of them were with underage girls.

Valentin told investigators the two 18-year-olds were “pursuing” him and that he had to break things off with them when he thought he was doing something wrong. The girls lied about him using his role as a state trooper to coerce them in the relationship because their complaint would not have been substantial otherwise, Valentin told McKibben.

In 2023 interviews, the two women told investigators that they were worried Valentin would prey on younger girls.

“It was all consensual, but I just don’t believe that Michael should be a state trooper doing those things that he has done,” one of them said. “I don’t want it to happen to anyone else.”

The girl whom Valentin messaged on Instagram told investigators that he would stare at underage girls at social events and that this behavior has been recurring.

“She said this made her feel uncomfortable and everyone knows he’s weird,” McKibben wrote in the file.

Valentin realized that messaging the girl on Instagram was wrong, he told McKibben.

“I started think thinking, yeah maybe this, I shouldn’t have sent anything and then I never sent anything else,” Valentin said.