Jon Wattenburger
By Patti Weaver
(Stillwater, Okla.) — A 60-year-old Cushing man has been given a jury-recommended 25-year prison term for sexually abusing a pre-teen relative during a five-year period and a concurrent five-year term for abusing her after she turned 13, court records show.
Jon David Wattenburger was sentenced on July 26 by District Judge Phillip Corley, who ordered him to comply with sex offender registration requirements.
Wattenburger, who maintained his innocence but did not testify at his trial, was convicted on May 1 by a Payne County jury composed of seven men and five women, who deliberated for five hours before finding him guilty of repeatedly sexually abusing his young relative during a six-year period ending in 2019.
During her closing argument, prosecutor Debra Vincent told jurors, “This case is very straight forward. Do you believe behavior like that can be confusing to a child? Do you believe it’s possible a child might get older and understand it a little? Do you believe it possible a child might want to get it off her chest and tell a friend?
“A trusted person regularly put his hands on her. She has never exaggerated what happened to her. She figured out she didn’t have to do that anymore. She told a friend. Her friend said, ‘tell your mom.’ You might say couldn’t this have been an accident, putting his hands under her waistband. How many times did this happen?
“How do we know this was for sexual gratification? There is no other reason why a grown man would put his hands in her pants. She’s 6, still under 12 when it stopped,” until “it happened (again) at Christmas.”
In a victim impact statement, her mother wrote, “In the time between when the last incident happened and when she told me about it, her world became very dark. She started hanging out with kids who did drugs and were into very dark things, and she even began cutting herself.
“Other than God, I am not sure how she is still here today. Things were very dark in her world, and I felt every day that I was losing her little by little. (She) has been raised in church since birth, so she knows The Word of The Lord inside and out, but for a season I was not sure that she would live to see sixteen.
“As her mother, I felt very helpless in it all. I felt like I was losing her and had no way of figuring out what to do to save her. I look back on pictures of her from 2013 and have seen a very sad, scared little girl. Before telling me, the weight on her shoulders was so heavy that no one could have blamed her for giving up. She struggled for so long, debating on telling me, knowing it would forever change our family. That is a weight NO CHILD should bear.
“I look back at these pictures of my daughter and can see the profound sadness in her eyes. I will never, not even for a day, not blame myself for not seeing what was going on. But as I look back at these pictures, I can see the true sadness in her; she is smiling, but deep down, something is wrong. Something that I would not learn the horror of until early 2019.”
Her father wrote in a victim impact statement, “This incident started when my ex-wife and I were separated and at which time she took (the girl) back to Oklahoma to live with (relatives) — people they thought they could trust. During that time, this man began doing terrible things to my daughter.
“During her early teens, we learned that she was cutting herself, hanging out with kids who did drugs and studying witchcraft. At that point, (she) began to hate going to (her relatives’ house). I didn’t understand what had changed until she came forward with this information.
“To this day, (she) will not/is not able to stay overnight with friends or even family because of the actions of Jon Wattenburger, which have led to her insecurity and distrust of people. (She) has come a long way in becoming the Godly young woman she has wanted to be. However, it is obvious that the past actions of this perpetrator, Jon Wattenburger, have and will continue to be an obstacle and possible hindrance in every relationship she has.
“As for myself, I cannot put into civil words the anger and emotions that this excuse of a human being evokes in me. The amount of sorrow I have for BOTH OF MY DAUGHTERS and the guilt of not being able to protect them will be a weight I carry until I die. Thirty years is nothing compared to what (my daughters) and the other victims will have to live with forever.”
