Child molester sentenced to 20 years

A Hillsboro man convicted of sex crimes against a child has been sentenced to serve twenty years in the Missouri Department of Corrections. Gregory Coleman, 29, was first charged and indicted in 2023 for a series of assaults of a child under the age of twelve, as previously reported by Howell County News. 

 

Colemen assaulted the girl while he resided in her father’s trailer house. Court documents signed by Lieutenant Torey Thompson of the Howell County Sheriff's Office, said the child, “disclosed details about sex acts which would be difficult to fabricate…especially considering the victim’s young age.”

 

A Howell County jury returned a guilty verdict on two charges of statutory sodomy and two charges of second-degree child molestation on August 7.

 

Sentencing took place on October 24. The Honorable R. David Ray sentenced Coleman to consecutive ten-year stretches for each of the sodomy convictions, and to two five-year stretches for the molestation convictions. The two ten-year sentences are consecutive, and the two five-year sentences will run concurrent with the others. 

 

Legal counsel for Coleman filed a notice of appeal on October 30.