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BRIEF: Plea entered in Lamar statutory rape case

Joplin Globe - 3/5/2017

March 05--LAMAR, Mo. -- A 22-year-old Lamar man received a suspended sentence recently on a conviction for statutory rape of a 16-year-old girl.

Miguel A. Contreras waived a preliminary hearing Monday in Barton County Circuit Court and pleaded guilty to a charge of second-degree statutory rape in a plea agreement with the prosecutor's office. Associate Circuit Judge James Nichols accepted the plea bargain and assessed Contreras seven years, with execution of the sentence suspended and the defendant placed on supervised probation for five years.

The girl disclosed to child abuse investigators Jan. 30 at the Children's Center in Joplin that Contreras had raped her on multiple occasions, holding a knife to her side, according to a probable-cause affidavit filed in the case. She said the most recent sexual assault had been the previous day, Jan. 29, at a residence in Lamar.

The affidavit states that Contreras admitted to investigators that he'd had sex with the girl on several occasions but claimed it was consensual and that they had been seeing each other since 2015. He further claimed to have obtained her mother's permission to date her, according to the affidavit.

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(c)2017 The Joplin Globe (Joplin, Mo.)

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