Erick Roy Hale
(PCSD file photo)
By Patti Weaver
(Stillwater, Okla.) — A 35-year-old Mulhall man, who avoided a jury trial this week by admitting he abused three of his children when the family lived in Stillwater between 2015 and 2018, was sentenced to six years in prison followed by four years of probation by District Judge Phillip Corley as part of a plea agreement with the prosecution approved last week.
Erick Roy Hale had already been convicted in 2022 of beating his partner’s daughter by a Payne County jury, which acquitted him of sexually abusing her between the ages of 5 and 10. For physically abusing her in Stillwater, Hale was sentenced in November by Associate District Judge Stephen Kistler to a jury-recommended 18-month prison term, with an order to register as a violent offender, provide a DNA sample and pay a $5,000 fine.
That victim said that when they lived in Stillwater, she and her siblings were told by her mother “to go pack their clothes because they were leaving Erick,” according to a Stillwater police affidavit.
In Hale’s other child physical abuse charges for which he had been scheduled to stand trial, Hale instead pleaded guilty last week to pushing a boy between the ages of 5 and 7 down a flight of stairs, choking a girl between the ages of 4 and 5, beating a boy with a belt and paddle all over his body between the ages of 8 and 9, and also pushing that boy between the ages of 5 and 7 down a flight of stairs in Stillwater.
Asked by Judge Corley what he had done, Hale replied in court, “I abused my children.” As part of his sentence, Hale was ordered to have no contact with his victims, comply with the violent crime registry, have an anger management assessment and follow any recommendations, as well as provide a DNA sample.
All of the charges in Payne County had been filed in 2021 after Stillwater Police Officer Shawn Millermon received a referral from a DHS child welfare specialist in another county that two children had disclosed sexual abuse and physical abuse by Hale, an affidavit alleged. “In the referral, it was made apparent there were other children in the home at the time of the abuse,” the affidavit said.
In April of 2021, the Stillwater officer observed forensic interviews in another county of two boys, one of whom claimed he had been sexually assaulted at age 8 or 9 by Hale when they lived in Stillwater, a charge that was dropped by the prosecution in December of 2021. The other boy described being pushed down the stairs after he and another boy dropped a kitten, the affidavit said.
The boy said that “just prior to being pushed, Erick told him, ‘Hope you land on your feet,"” the affidavit said. He said that “he hit his head when this happened and he remembered Erick laughing at him,” the affidavit said.
In March of 2021, the Stillwater officer had observed forensic interview of four other children, ages, 7, 10, 11 and 13, at the Saville Center in Stillwater, the affidavit said. One of the boys, then 11, “disclosed being physically abused frequently by Erick,” the affidavit said. He said that when he was 2, he “received stitches from being slammed into the bed frame by Erick,” the affidavit said.
A 10-year-old girl said while staying at a relative’s house in Stillwater, “she was choked by Erick,” when she was about 4, the affidavit said. She said, “she felt as though she was going to die because she couldn’t breathe,” the affidavit said.
She said that another girl “had told her about being sexually abused by Erick, but did not want to talk about herself,” the affidavit alleged.
