By Jeff Lehr

jlehr@joplinglobe.com

A man who was to have begun a job as a girls basketball coach in August at Granby was bound over for trial Thursday in connection with charges that he had sexual relations last spring with a 16-year-old girl from Webb City.

The girl was the lone witness to testify at a preliminary hearing for Joshua Joseph Long, 30, of Oronogo, in Jasper County Circuit Court in Joplin.

At the conclusion of her testimony, Associate Circuit Judge Richard Copeland found probable cause for Long to stand trial on one count of second-degree statutory rape and ordered the defendant to make an initial appearance in a trial division of the court on Nov. 10.

Long is accused of having sex with the girl on three occasions and faces a total of three statutory-rape counts. The court heard testimony concerning just one of the counts Thursday since charge documents initially filed with the court failed to specify the dates and circumstances of the other two offenses.

Assistant Prosecutor Theresa Kenney said after the hearing that amended charge documents will be filed and another preliminary hearing set with respect to the other counts.

Long had been hired to be the girls basketball coach this year at East Newton High School at Granby. He was forced to resign when the allegations arose this summer and he was charged Aug. 1. Authorities at the time said Long previously had been employed as a coach for the McDonald County and Carl Junction school districts.

The girl entered the court crying Thursday and remained tearful as she testified how she had sex with Long in the kitchen of his home on June 12. She said her relationship with him began toward the end of last school year and included near-daily texting of messages to each other via cell phones.

She told the court that he’d sent her by phone a picture of himself shirtless, and she’d sent back two nude pictures of herself. She testified that she had been to his house on another occasion when his wife and stepson were there and that she went there June 12 specifically to have sex with him.

“We had planned on seeing each other,” she told the court.

She described how they kissed, disrobed and had sexual intercourse on the kitchen island in his home.

Under cross-examination by defense attorney Dee Wampler of Springfield, the girl denied having told any of her girlfriends about the encounter. She testified that she did not tell anyone until July 4, but acknowledged that once word got around and school officials and an investigator from the Jasper County Sheriff’s Department approached her about it, she’d told them it was “just a rumor.”

She said that the sexual relationship with Long had been “a rumor before (it) ever happened” and that she did not confirm it to investigators until she underwent about a four-hour, videotaped interview at the Children’s Center in Joplin.

When Wampler tried to question the girl about how many times she’d driven by Long’s home since her allegations were made, Kenney objected to the relevance of the question for the purposes of a preliminary hearing. Wampler claimed that it was relevant because the girl had been “stalking” his client. But the judge sustained Kenney’s objection and ended the line of questioning.