By: Patti Weaver
(Stillwater, Okla.) — An 80-year-old man has avoided a jury trial this week by admitting he repeatedly abused a girl from the age of 7 through 9 during 2013 and 2014 at his residence in Yale, court records show.
After Jerry Wayne LeForce pleaded guilty earlier this month to one count of child sexual abuse, Payne County District Judge Phillip Corley sentenced him to eight years in prison followed by 17 years of probation during which he must comply with the sex offender registry.
LeForce was originally charged with sexually abusing three young children between 2013 and 2014 at his Yale residence, but the counts regarding the other two children were dismissed by the prosecution on Nov. 17, 2020, court records show.
The case had been filed against LeForce on Sept. 22, 2020, after Payne County Sheriff’s Investigator Rockford Brown observed forensic interviews with the three children at the Saville Center in Stillwater, court records show.
In the first of three assaults on the girl to which LeForce pleaded guilty earlier this month, LeForce told her not to tell anyone and if she did, LeForce “would get into a lot of trouble and go away for a long time,” according to the investigator’s affidavit.
During the second assault on that same girl, LeForce told her “not to tell anyone or it would be ‘really bad for you,"” according to the affidavit.
The third assault on the same girl ended when her voice raised and “LeForce ultimately let (her) go,” the affidavit said.
If LeForce had been convicted by a jury of child sexual abuse, he could have been given a sentence ranging from a minimum of 25 years in prison to a maximum of life, court records show.
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