Convicted sexual predator bound over for trial

Jul. 21--MOUNT VERNON, Mo. -- A defendant sentenced in March to 15 years in prison for sexual abuse of a girl under 12 years old in Jasper County was ordered bound over for trial Monday on charges that he sexually abused another child five years ago in Lawrence County.

Associate Judge Scott Sifferman decided at the conclusion of a preliminary hearing in Lawrence County Circuit Court that there is sufficient probable cause for Christopher R. Versteeg, 40, to stand trial on charges of first-degree sodomy and first-degree rape. The judge set Versteeg's initial appearance in a trial division of the court for Aug. 10.

Kim Sterling, with the Children's Center in Joplin, testified at the hearing that she conducted a forensic interview of a 16-year-old girl in 2019 during which the girl disclosed that Versteeg sexually abused her on two occasions in March or April 2015 when she was 12 years old and finishing her sixth-grade year in school.

Sterling said the girl told her that Versteeg entered her room at a residence in Vernon County while she was asleep and woke her up by touching her inappropriately beneath her clothing on the first occasion and raping her the second time a couple of nights later.

Versteeg, who has had both Carthage and Stotts City addresses listed on court records in recent years, pleaded guilty March 5 in Jasper County Circuit Court to first-degree statutory sodomy in a case involving a girl under 12 years old. Abuse of that child took place in the summer and fall of 2013 inside a shed on property near Carthage and at Kellogg Lake on the edge of Carthage, according to a probable-cause affidavit.

He was sentenced to 15 years for that crime.

The defendant also has a conviction from 2015 involving sexual contact with a child younger than 12. He was sentenced to five years for child endangerment in that case. An affidavit filed at that time stated that he was suspected of having raped and sodomized "multiple female children" on a "daily" basis.

Detective Michael Hollier wrote in the affidavit for the Jasper County case: "The victims of these crimes who have been identified in this investigation and the investigation that resulted in his previous incarceration live in fear of the defendant now, although the crimes committed against them occurred five to seven years ago."

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