An Arlington man has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for several child sex crimes, court documents show..
Willis Ernest Wellman Jr. pleaded guilty to these crimes Friday in 78th District Court:
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Three counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child for 2010 incidents Jan. 15, March 15 and May 15. The first degree felony is punishable by five to 99 years or life in prison.
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One count of indecency with a child for a June 15, 2010, incident. The second degree felony carries a punishment of two to 20 years in prison.
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Two counts of sexual assault of a child for incidents March 29, 2014. The offense is also a second degree felony.
As part of a plea bargain, Judge Meredith Kennedy handed down six 20-year prison sentences to run concurrently, court records show. Wellman, 63, is required to register as a sex offender. He will receive over a year of jail time credit.
Charges against him dismissed Friday included continuous sexual abuse of a child under 14, a first degree felony, and sexual assault of a child. A misdemeanor charge of resisting arrest, transport or search was dismissed Monday.
Wellman was being held Wednesday in the Wichita County Jail, pending his transfer to prison, according to online jail records.
He had originally been charged with three counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child and one count of indecency with a child through sexual contact.
The charges stem from allegations reported to Wichita Falls police in 2014 when a 16-year-old girl said she was sexually assaulted by Wellman beginning when she was 5 to 7 years old, court records show.
The girl said in court documents her family relocated from Jack County to near Iowa Park in 2009 when she was 12 years old, and the assaults continued there. When she was 16, her family moved to Wichita Falls where she said Wellman, a member of the household, assaulted her in a bedroom.
Wichita County Jail records show Wellman was first arrested on sexual assault charges in July 2016, bonded out a few days later and was rearrested for a charge of continuous sex abuse of a child in late December 2021. He was released in mid-January 2021and jailed again in January 2024 when a grand jury returned new indictments against him.
He will be credited with 423 days he has spent in the Wichita County Jail.
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This article originally appeared on Wichita Falls Times Record News: Plea in a child sexual assault case sends man to prison