Columbus woman pleads guilty to felony child-sex charge

Roger McKinney, Joping Globe, July 08, 2008

A Columbus woman will be sentenced Aug. 19 after pleading guilty Tuesday to a reduced charge of felony attempted aggravated indecent liberties with a child.

Ashley Thompson, 23, was bound over for trial in September 2007 on three 
felony counts of aggravated indecent liberties with a child. The victim 
was the then-14-year-old boy who had worked as the baby sitter for 
Thompson-s children at her house in Columbus. The original charges 
alleged Thompson had sex with the boy on Feb. 25 and March 1 and 2, 
2007, at her house in Columbus.

The original charges were dismissed when she pleaded guilty to the 
reduced charge as part of a plea agreement.

Cherokee County District Judge Kent Lynch found Thompson guilty of the 
amended charge.

Thompson's attorney, Sam Marsh, told Lynch he would submit the 
transcript of the preliminary hearing as the factual basis of the charge.

The victim wasn't in the courtroom for the plea hearing, but the 
victim-s mother said before the hearing started that her son didn't want 
to testify in front of Thompson again.

"It has totally changed him," she said of the situation. She said she 
agreed to the plea deal because her son wanted it.

The victim's mother said society has a double-standard about such 
crimes, and that if the incident involved a 23-year-old man having sex 
with a 14-year-old girl, the case would have gone to trial. She said as 
it is, she couldn't take the chance that a member of the jury wouldn't 
see anything wrong with a 23-year-old woman having sex with a 
14-year-old boy. Thompson was 22 at the time of alleged sex acts.

"It-s not right," she said. "It-s not fair. He-s as much a victim as a 
14-year-old girl."

She said she considered it a problem with society, rather than one of 
the legal system.

Former Assistant Cherokee County Attorney Garth Adams prosecuted the 
case during the preliminary hearing, but County Attorney John Bullard 
had since taken over the prosecution.

The plea agreement contained no specific recommendation as to 
sentencing, but Marsh said outside the courtroom that based on 
Thompson-s criminal history, she would be expected to be assessed 
probation.

Thompson has been bound over for trial in Jasper County Circuit Court, 
Joplin, Mo., on a felony charge of second-degree statutory rape in an 
alleged incident in Jasper County, with the same alleged victim named.

"Over here I feel helpless," the victim's mother said. "In Jasper 
County, I don't. I feel she'll be held accountable in Jasper County."

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