By Jeff Lehr
jlehr@joplinglobe.com
A Jasper County judge on Monday assessed a Golden City man five years in prison for child molestation and accepted a plea change from a rural Carl Junction man also accused of a child-sex offense.
Circuit Judge Gayle Crane sentenced Loren A. Potts Jr., 72, in Jasper County Circuit Court in Joplin to the prison term after a guilty plea to first-degree child molestation.
Potts pleaded guilty Nov. 30 in an agreement with the county prosecutor’s office that dismissed a second count of first-degree statutory sodomy and limited the sentence he might be assessed to no more than 10 years.
Court documents show that Potts was charged in August 2008 after an investigation by the Jasper County Sheriff’s Department into the alleged abuse of a girl under the age of 13 in 2006. A probable-cause affidavit states that he touched the girl inappropriately.
The affidavit states that he admitted to abusing that victim and a second girl as well.
In a separate case in Crane’s courtroom, John W. Swager II, 39, changed his plea to guilty on one of two counts of second-degree statutory rape.
The second count was dismissed in a plea agreement with the county prosecutor’s office. The agreement would cap any prison sentence Swager might be assessed for the conviction at no more than five years.
The judge delayed formal acceptance or rejection of the plea bargain, and ordered the completion of a sentencing-assessment report. Swager will be sentenced March 29.
Court records say Swager engaged in sexual intercourse with a 16-year-old girl on numerous occasions over a 10-month period ending in November 2008.
He reportedly admitted to investigators with the Jasper County Sheriff’s Department that he knew she was a minor at the time.
Swager was charged with the offenses in May of last year.
