I dont claim to know the exact truth on this, but it is pretty sure that there's a lot of propaganda on this case.
There definitely is. I haven't reviewed any of the evidence regarding the accusations but yes, propaganda abounds. Both on the for and against side. I don't know if he's guilty or not, but either way I'm not going to judge him. The world will keep on turning if I decide not to pass moral judgement on someone.
All I really know about the guy is that I seen him make some very good points in a debate a long time ago, before he went to jail. He made logical mistakes here and there, yes....but he also presented a lot of very sound logical arguments that were way better than what you usually see when a creationist debates with an evolutionist. To be quite frank about it, most Scientific based Apologists absolutely suck at what they are trying to do even though they mean well. Hovind had some really good moments in that regard.
For example, he once said something along the lines of "Ok, im going to have you tell me how a computer came to be.....but theres one catch.....you can't say man created it. How did it get there?". I thought that was really useful philosophically, because thats basically the parameters creationists are pressured to answer within. God is not allowed to even be considered as a possibility in tenured academia. Really is a strong thought exercise when you think about how much more complex our bodies are compared to computers.
We know alot about our bodies but there are still a LOT of things we don't understand and we cant produce one from scratch aside from reproduction....yet the possibility of us being created deliberately and intelligently is somehow supposed to be foolish and illogical, and even being open to investigating the possibility seems to be reason enough for a scientist to be shunned by their peers. There is no rationality in the approach mainstream academia is taking and even agnostics can recognize that pretty easily.
I think philosophical thought experiments like Hovind presented there really can have a positive impact with agnostic people. Its better than the argument type debates that produces no fruit and encourages no sincere inquiry on either side, which sadly seems to be the norm.