Photo: Vernard Deatherage
A 49-year-old sex offender pled guilty during a session of Baxter County Circuit Court Thursday to violating registration requirements and was sentenced to three years in prison with two suspended and one to serve. The sentence will be run concurrently with time he is currently spending in the Arkansas Department of Correction.
Vernard Deatherage is an inmate in the Grimes Unit of the state prison system at Newport from an earlier conviction. He is required to register as a sex offender, after being found guilty of statutory rape and sodomy involving two 9-year-old girls in Douglas County, Missouri in February 2002.
In early June, Deatherage came to the Mountain Home Police Department to register as a sex offender. He said he had just been released from prison in Missouri. Deatherage gave a local motel as his address. However, when officers went there to contact him, Deatherage had moved back to Missouri where he was staying with a girlfriend.
A registered sex offender is required to report any change of address 10 days prior to actually making the move. Deatherage had not notified law enforcement he was making the change.
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