CAPE GIRARDEAU, MO (U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of Missouri) – U.S. District Audrey G. Fleissig on Tuesday (Apr 22nd) sentenced a man whose trial for recording a girl in the bathroom revealed allegations that he had sexually abused at least three other children to 21 years in prison.
Fifty-two-year old Rayford Evans of Doniphan, in Ripley County, was convicted of attempted sexual exploitation of a minor after a one-day bench trial in January. Evidence and testimony showed that Evans used his cell phone to record a 15-year-old girl while she was bathing and using the bathroom by holding it up to a window above the bathroom door. The victim saw the phone and told a friend, the friend’s father and then her own father, who contacted the Doniphan City Police Department. An officer found three videos of the girl that Evans tried to delete.
During Evans trial, another victim testified about her sexual abuse at the hands of Evans, and there was testimony that Evans had recorded videos of a different girl. Three others testified at Evans’ sentencing hearing Tuesday about his sexual abuse of them.
“Evans has sexually exploited children for decades,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Julie Hunter wrote in a sentencing memo, and “used bribery in the form of electronics, toys, and candy to violate the trust of innocent children to sexually abuse them.”
One victim described Evans in a letter as a predator who has “hunted children, for his depraved sexual appetite, for at least 26 years.”
Evans has disputed the allegations involving other victims.
The FBI and the Doniphan City Police Department investigated the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Julie Hunter prosecuted the case.
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Department of Justice Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims.