A Mountain Home woman charged with having sex with a teenage male appeared in Baxter County Circuit Court/Criminal Division Monday.
Thirty-five-year-old Ashley Ann Normandy pled guilty to a sexual indecency with a child charge and was given a six-year prison sentence with two to serve and four years suspended. A more serious charge was dismissed by the state.
The victim made a lengthy impact statement to the court in which he outlined the serious mental and physical problems he still contends with today.
When the plea agreement worked out by prosecutors and defense attorneys was presented to Circuit Judge John Putman, he said he understood the hesitancy of the victim’s family to make the young man go through the trauma of a jury trial but was not in agreement with the charge filed or the punishment recommended.
Judge Putman told the attorneys that there had been recent sex trials in other parts of the 14th Judicial District where sentences of more than 100 years had been imposed.
He said the problem he was having is that “what the victim described to this court in his statement is not what is being charged, what was described seems to me to call for more serious charges and more serious punishment.”
There were conferences at the bench and in chambers and eventually the judge accepted the plea and sentenced Normandy.
The judge was told that the victim and members of the victim’s family agreed with the sentence called for in the plea.
In addition to the prison time and and suspended prison time , Normandy will have to register as a sex offender.
The warrant, which was served May 27, indicates the alleged crimes occurred in late 2024.
The file has been sealed by the court, meaning documents such as the probable cause affidavit are not available to the public.
A trial had been set for November 10.
Normandy has been free on $50,000 bond. She was taken into custody after being sentenced and is jailed in the Baxter County Detention Center awaiting transportation to the a unit of the state prison system.
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