(Stillwater) — A Ripley man who was convicted of assaulting a 15-year-old Glencoe girl has been ordered to stand trial on a felony charge of failure to register as a sex offender.
Jesse William Hodge Jr., 26, remains free on $5,000 bail pending his arraignment in trial court May 22. He had waived his right to a preliminary hearing last week.
If convicted of giving a false address to the Payne County Sheriff’s Office while residing at a prohibited location, Hodge could be given as much as a five-year prison term and a $5,000 fine for failure to register as a sex offender.
In 2005, Hodge was accused of raping the Glencoe girl, but he avoided a jury trial by accepting a plea bargain to a reduced charge of assault with intent to commit a crime, for which he was given a five-year prison term in 2006.
Hodge was released from prison in December 2007 after being incarcerated for less than two years, according to state Department of Corrections records.
Payne County Sheriff’s Deputy Paul Fox had been dispatched on July 4, 2005, to the Stillwater Medical Center to take a report on an alleged rape of a 15-year-old girl, an affidavit said.
After he talked to the girl and her parents at the hospital, the deputy sat in while the girl was interviewed by a Stillwater Medical Center nurse and a Stillwater Domestic Violence Services representative, Fox wrote in an affidavit.
The girl said that about 9 p.m. on the previous night, she and her friends “went to the trailer to hang out,” but they moved to a tent around midnight when it started to rain, the affidavit said.
The girls’s friends, who were ages 14, 15 and 16, were from the Glencoe and Ripley areas, authorities said.
According to the affidavit, the girl said that she was raped while she was alone in the tent with Hodge — after her friends left to go to “Crybaby Bridge,” which is located in the Ripley area, about three miles from the trailer.
The girl said that Hodge had been drinking beer and had smoked marijuana, the affidavit said.
The girl, who said she had previously met Hodge a couple of times, admitted that she had beer, the affidavit said.
The girl said that after she was sexually assaulted, she was able to jump up and leave the tent, the affidavit said.
After Hodge was released from prison, he registered with the Payne County Sheriff’s Office on Jan. 11, 2008, to live at a Ripley address on Dunn Street, Sheriff’s Investigator Larry Kitchel wrote in an affidavit.
Payne County Sexual Offender Registry Officer Tina Pierce contacted Hodge about two weeks later to notify Hodge that he could not live at that address “because it was too close to the Ripley School and across the street from the Methodist Church,” the affidavit said.
The same day, Hodge contacted Pierce and told her that he had now moved to Stillwater, the affidavit said.
On Oct. 14, 2008, Ripley Police Officer Dennis Hughes phoned Pierce and asked about Hodge living on Dunn Street in Ripley, the affidavit said. The Ripley officer was advised that Hodge was not registered at that Ripley address, the affidavit said.
Pierce then contacted Hodge’s Stillwater landlord, who said that Hodge had been out of the residence for about two months and owed rent, the affidavit said.
On Oct. 21, 2008, Hodge registered with Pierce as living at another Ripley location on Lumpkin Lane, the affidavit said.
But when Payne County Sheriff’s Deputy Scott Hooper checked that address the next day, Hodge was not living there, the affidavit said.
On Nov. 13, 2008, an unknown female contacted Pierce to ask about Hodge living on Dunn Street in Ripley, the affidavit said.
According to the sheriff’s investigator’s affidavit, “It appears that defendant has not followed procedures for legal registry for sex offender.”
