Manhattan man charged with raping 16-year-old girl and filming her pleads to lesser offense in Douglas County | News, Sports, Jobs

Photo of: Mugshot courtesy of Johnson County Sheriff’s Office

Preston M. Jones is pictured at the Douglas County Judicial and Law Enforcement Center.

A Manhattan man originally accused of raping a 16-year-old girl and filming it pleaded no contest to a lesser offense Monday as part of a deal with the state.

The man, Preston Meier Jones, 22, was originally charged with rape, sexual exploitation of a child and sale of alcohol to a minor, all felonies, according to charging documents. The charges stem from an incident on Jan. 3, 2022, and all involve the same victim, who was 16 at the time.

Jones pleaded no contest Friday to one count of attempted aggravated assault. The state, represented by Assistant District Attorney Ricardo Leal, asked the court to find that the crime was sexually motivated and to register Jones as a sex offender for 15 years. Leal said Jones took the girl to a secluded location to commit the crime.

Leal said Jones also has a DUI case pending as of February 2023, and that as part of the plea agreement, Jones agreed to plead guilty or no contest, but that the case would be resolved after the assault case is sentenced. The state then moved to dismiss the remaining charges as part of the plea agreement.

Judge Amy Hanley accepted Jones’ guilty plea and said that under prosecutors’ law, she must sentence Jones to probation with a minimum of 17 months in prison on the reduced charge. Leal said the state is proposing a prison sentence of 19 months. He said the state is assuming Jones has no prior criminal record.

The charge of sexual exploitation was originally made a serious crime that could have resulted in a prison sentence of at least 4.5 years if the defendant had been convicted. The charge of rape could have resulted in a prison sentence of at least 12 years under state law.

Jones’ attorney Dakota Loomis then asked the court to lift Jones’s pretrial conditions, including a GPS-equipped ankle monitor and house arrest, which Hanley accepted. Hanley then scheduled sentencing for August 15. Jones is currently free on $15,000 bail.

According to an affidavit supporting Jones’ arrest, the alleged rape was reported to a Eudora school security officer on February 15, 2022, who referred it to Eudora police. The victim told police that she and Jones, then 19, dated from October 2021 to January 2022 and initially had a good relationship, but that toward the end of the relationship, Jones “became very manipulative and became physically abusive on several occasions.”

In the early morning of Jan. 3, 2022, the girl sneaked out of her home to meet Jones at an empty house, where the two began drinking alcohol, she told police. She said she remembered having consensual sex with Jones, but at some point she passed out and crawled away from Jones, but he followed her and continued to perform sexual acts on her. The next thing the girl could remember was Jones waking her up and telling her they had to leave, according to the affidavit.

Days later, the girl was with Jones and searched his phone, where she found a video showing the two having sex that night. The girl kept the video and later gave it to police. An officer viewed the video and noticed that the girl was “heavily intoxicated,” slurring her words and appeared to be in pain at times during sex before she crawled away from Jones and fell asleep, according to the affidavit. The officer then wrote that Jones abused the girl in the video in various ways while she was sleeping.

An affidavit of arrest is a sworn document that states the probable cause for the arrest of a person. The allegations contained in affidavits have not been proven in court.