A 33-year-old Lawrence man has pleaded guilty to eight charges and admitted he sexually abused two girls at his northern Lawrence home over a two-year period.
“I did this for my own sexual gratification, and I’m truly sorry,” Donald L. Brown said in court Friday morning when he entered the pleas.
Brown faced a Jan. 24 trial in the case on eight counts. He pleaded guilty to three counts of rape, three counts of aggravated criminal sodomy and two counts of aggravated indecent liberties with a child.
District Judge Peggy Kittel said each count carries a penalty of 25 years to life in prison.
His attorney, Michael Clarke, said Brown decided to plead guilty several weeks ago, but he was fasting for nutritional reasons at the time. So Clarke asked him to wait closer to the trial to decide.
There was no plea agreement in the case with prosecutor Amy McGowan, a chief assistant district attorney, Clarke said.
Kittel last month sentenced Brown’s wife, Natasha M. Brown, 34, to serve 28 months in prison after a jury in October convicted her of two counts of aggravated child endangerment and one count of lewd and lascivious behavior. The girls are now 9 and 11 years old.
Douglas County District Attorney Charles Branson said prosecutors were happy with the pleas and the fact the girls would not have to testify again.
“We would not have been able to reach this outcome without the solid investigative work of law enforcement and the bravery of the victims to confront their abuser,” Branson said.
The girls’ family from Topeka met the Browns through Heritage Baptist Church, which is northwest of Lawrence. Prosecutors have said that in May the girls talked to their parents, accusing Donald Brown of having sex with them. Lawrence police later arrested the Browns.
The girls and their siblings would stay with the Browns in Lawrence on weekends or during the week in between school and church events.
During Natasha Brown’s trial, both girls testified to several instances when Donald Brown had sex with them and molested them from June 2008 to May 2010. Prosecutors also said Natasha Brown told police she thought her husband was sexually “grooming” the girls.
Kittel gave Natasha Brown a harsher sentence — normally the convictions warranted probation due to her lack of criminal history — because she said Brown did nothing to try to stop the abuse even though the girls’ parents entrusted them to the Browns.
Kittel is scheduled to sentence Donald Brown March 4.
Comments
skyking62 2 years, 4 months ago
28 months is a harsher sentence? Really? Were it in my power, this would be a life sentence...it sure is for the victims.
PitBullGrandma 2 years, 4 months ago
That's the wife's sentence...he is to be sentenced March 4.
Raiden 2 years, 4 months ago
not harsh enough for knowing of his travesty to those girls and doing NOTHING to stop it. They were ENTRUSTED to her hence she was responsible for their safety...she is as guilty as he is.
CloveK 2 years, 4 months ago
True, but it is to the full extent of the law
PitBullGrandma 2 years, 4 months ago
That's the wife's sentence...he is to be sentenced March 4.
beerbaron03 2 years, 4 months ago
don't drop the soap dude
ahasavoy 2 years, 4 months ago
How old are these girls???
kernal 2 years, 4 months ago
Under the age of consent.
Raiden 2 years, 4 months ago
true enough, but it's irrelevant really as he is the adult and therefore expected to behave in a responsible manner...... instead his sick and reckless actions will have lifelong effects on these girls....not only did he and his wife rob them of their childhoods, they severely damaged their capacity for trust not to mention deep psychic scars that will haunt them for life and manifest in ways that will impinge on their growth and development as human beings. His future suffering in prison as a pedophile will never equal the effects his actions had on these girls.
George Diepenbrock 2 years, 4 months ago
We have updated the story. The girls are now 9 and 11.
George Diepenbrock Staff Writer Lawrence Journal-World 645 New Hampshire St. Lawrence, KS 66044 (785) 832-7144 gdiepenbrock@ljworld.com
dudedog12 2 years, 4 months ago
This dude needs a chili dog.
nobody1793 2 years, 4 months ago
This comment was removed by the site staff for violation of the usage agreement.
Starcraft 2 years, 4 months ago
I am not sure there is a proper sentence for people that can do such things repeatedly. Getting drunk or high and doing it one time is sick but to plot and calculate under the name of Church is at a different level. Any sentence of these kind of folks should include them getting cut so there is no chance of repeat offense.
pizzapete 2 years, 4 months ago
drunk or high, there is no excuse for this type of behavior. Prime death penalty material I think.
PrettyTony 2 years, 4 months ago
This comment was removed by the site staff for violation of the usage agreement.
Jimo 2 years, 4 months ago
"His attorney, Michael Clarke, said Brown decided to plead guilty several weeks ago, but he was fasting for nutritional reasons at the time. So Clarke asked him to wait closer to the trial to decide."
Are these facts relevant to some point? So what?
Was it a straight fast or some sort of cleansing diet? Has Brown's nutritional state improved? Would Brown recommend this for others? What was Clarke's reaction to this news when he first heard it from Brown? Did Brown make his decision at the hearing or the day before? There are so many other irrelevant facts missing from this story.
BruceWayne 2 years, 4 months ago
This comment was removed by the site staff for violation of the usage agreement.
otto 2 years, 4 months ago
lol
bigdave 2 years, 4 months ago
LOL!!!!
Missingit 2 years, 4 months ago
His sentence should include a cell with a large male who has not seen a woman in years.
papillon 2 years, 4 months ago
Don't worry. He will be treated harshly and in a way that you don't really want to know the full details of. Child molesters are always abused in prison, no matter the measures taken to protect them. The hierarchy in prison is very, very tough and he'll stand no chance. He has no idea what's coming.
Kontum1972 2 years, 4 months ago
thats standard issue @ the institutions
BigPrune 2 years, 4 months ago
Unfortunately, I guess at the big house these days the other prisoners don't care anymore what their fellow cell mates did to get them in prison, so it isn't a guarantee that he's going to get it in the end.
Dejacrew423 2 years, 4 months ago
“I did this for my own sexual gratification, and I’m truly sorry,” Donald L. Brown said in court Friday morning when he entered the pleas.
This guy is only sorry because he was caught. I hope he rots in prison.
Agnostick 2 years, 4 months ago
This comment was removed by the site staff for violation of the usage agreement.
earthus 2 years, 4 months ago
Sexual assault and rape are deplorable actions. The prison rape "jokes" are inappropriate and reflect the idea that there are times/circumstances when rape is okay. It is never ok.
Thinking 2 years, 4 months ago
Thank you!
jjaybean63 2 years, 4 months ago
You may be right but i wouldn't lose sleep over it if it happen to this guy.
Downtoearth 2 years, 4 months ago
True that!! earthus
Jimo 2 years, 4 months ago
These stories are so sad.
One recent suicide of an internet blogger is stirring up some comment. His note here: http://documents.from.bz/note.txt
One key section: I'm just a broken, miserable shell of a human being. Being molested has defined me as a person and shaped me as a human being and it has made me the monster I am and there's nothing I can do to escape it. I don't know any other existence. I don't know what life feels like where I'm apart from any of this. I actively despise the person I am. I just feel fundamentally broken, almost non-human. I feel like an animal that woke up one day in a human body, trying to make sense of a foreign world, living among creatures it doesn't understand and can't connect with.
I have accepted that the darkness will never allow me to be in a relationship. I will never go to sleep with someone in my arms, feeling the comfort of their hands around me. I will never know what uncontimated [uncontaminated?] intimacy is like. I will never have an exclusive bond with someone, someone who can be the recipient of all the love I have to give. I will never have children, and I wanted to be a father so badly. I think I would have made a good dad. And even if I had fought through the darkness and married and had children all [the] while being unable to feel intimacy, I could have never done that if suicide were a possibility. I did try to minimize pain, although I know that this decision will hurt many of you. If this hurts you, I hope that you can at least forget about me quickly.
none2 2 years, 4 months ago
Thanks for sharing it. That was a very sad story.
One can never be inside the head of another, so even with the long explanation, I'm not going to say I understand him. I really don't. For myself, I have known people who were sexually abused at an early age (both relatives and friends), so I do know that the end doesn't have to be this. I have also known people whose religious views differed so much from their other family, that there was lots of friction.
The thing I felt in his letter was a resigned anger for lack of a better term. Again though, every person's mind is a universe separate from our own, so where exactly his mind was will always be somewhat of a mystery. For myself, in the worst of times (as I perceive them within my own head), I think of the Captain Kirk from Star Trek in regards to the Kobayashi Maru test. He simply refused to believe in a no-win scenario. I guess I feel the same in the worst of times -- there has always got to be another solution. To me suicide is a surrender to one's own depression/anger/hatered/etc. That surrender is totally unacceptable.
wmathews 2 years, 4 months ago
I removed it because it had a modified swear word in it. We don't allow the real version or a slightly modified version with asterisks, one letter out of place, etc. Feel free to re-post without the word!
Whitney Mathews Assistant Community Editor for Online
heatherlee 2 years, 4 months ago
i went to school with this guy and always had a feeling he was a creep Im glad he's caught and thinks he deserves life sentence or death. Those 2 little girls have a life sentence of dealing with whats happened to them. There should be a loophole to the cruel and unusual punishment, that child predators should receive all the cruel and unusual punishment law officials can dish out and hell let the inmates in on it too :)
DRsmith 2 years, 4 months ago
This can't be...A Lawrence man committing a crime against Topekans? Hope he rots in prison.
Ray_Finkle 2 years, 4 months ago
Wow, and he doesn't even look like a child molester!!
awdvkd 2 years, 4 months ago
What does a child molester look like, molesters are anybody and everybody. That mentality are why molesters find ways to do what they do. When you have that feeling something is not right about someone trust that feeling and protect your children. Teach your children what is appropriate and what is not then let them know it always OK to talk to you about ANYTHING they feel uncomfortable with that happens to them.
AreUNorml 2 years, 4 months ago
perhaps he's shaved the mustache.
Ray_Finkle 2 years, 4 months ago
Maybe I should have added: "Warning, this comment is dripping with sarcasm."
awdvkd 2 years, 4 months ago
No it sounded pretty common to a lot of the statement s in this blog.
Agnostick 2 years, 4 months ago
Apparently someone's virginal ears were too tender for my previous sentiments on this subject. Either that or they favor child molestation. So, a rephrase.
I espouse immediate, swift, capital punishment for child molesters--every single one of them. Child molesters cannot be reformed, re-educated, re-programmed. They may manage to go several months, even several years before molesting again--but it's an inescapable eventuality.
Capital punishment is the only way to rid society of this disease, and save children from its horrors. Leaving a child molester upright and breathing is nothing more but dooming another child to become a victim.
b22 2 years, 4 months ago
I agree completely, I think we as a society take far to lax of a view on these people. We give harsher punishment for far less damaging acts. If death was the penalty for this action, many people would think twice before doing it. These people are the worst criminals that we have, lets treat them as such!
mr_right_wing 2 years, 4 months ago
I hate to make it sound like I'm saying ANYTHING good about the guy; but I am grateful we (taxpayers) aren't stuck paying for a full trial, more importantly than that, this whole family doesn't have to re-live it again.
I'm also very pleasantly surprised there will be no plea bargain.
hawksfanatic 2 years, 4 months ago
Those of you who are calling for the death penalty are dead wrong. As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, I can attest to its horrible damage and terrible consequences. What, however, would have been served by executing a living relative in my family; what price to tear the family fabric apart? For years I struggled with this issue, but finally was able pull myself from my dark, encasing prison. I did this through Survivors of Incest Anonymous and psychotherapy. I forgave my relative and he died without an apology or an admission. I believe he paid, in his own way, through his unexpressed suffering and remorse. It hounded him to his grave - and perhaps beyond.
none2 2 years, 4 months ago
Thank you for your post, and I hope you are doing well.
My relatives never got an apology from their mother for her participation in their abuse by their step-father. Thus she died estranged from them -- the step-dad had died years before. They didn't seek an apology from him, they simply kept him away from both themselves and their children so that it couldn't possibly happen with another generation.
My relatives went on to live happy, successful lives and have wonderful families of their own. That isn't to trivialize child sexual abuse, but this idea of capital punishment for child molestation trivialities extreme crimes and also prevents pedophiles from even considering getting help.
I believe in capital punish for the most extreme crimes. Such as murder, torture, dismemberment. Perhaps you heard of the 14 year old girl from Great Bend who was raped/sodomized and then killed with her body being burned beyond recognition -- last August. His punishment should be capital punishment. The same I believe holds true for torture and dismemberment. Years ago there was a rapist who raped a teenager, cut off her arms, and left her to bleed to death. She survived, but with both her arms left. These are extreme crimes that demand the highest punishment allowed by law. By saying that all molesting criminals should be put to death is a slap in the face to those that have suffered though so much more and possibly even lost their lives.
LMH 2 years, 4 months ago
Swift and immediate justice is appropriate - but jail time isn't adequate in this kind of case.
yankeevet 2 years, 4 months ago
A rope; missouri mule; and a kansas oak tree; frontier justice for this rotton bastard.....
independent_rebel 2 years, 4 months ago
I can't post what I would do to this piece of crap, but the end result would be that after we tested various medical treatments on him (and spare the rats and monkeys) tthere would be pieces of this slime ball spread...nevermind.
mr_right_wing 2 years, 4 months ago
Perhaps if this was to qualify as a 'hate crime' the penalty could be more severe.
This, however does not meet those qualifications.
Even with 'good behavior' this person will spend the majority of what is left in his life in corrections.
LJD94 1 year, 8 months ago
To none2: The death penalty can be applied for more than just three crimes. Your saying one punishment goes with one crime, and no more. The problem with that is there aren't enough punishments to go around. Murder gets death, molestation gets 25-life, all the way down to drugs getting a slap on the hand. And I dont think victims of rape/dismemberment/murder would mind to much if a simple child molester gets the death penalty. In fact, I think they'd be happy with that.
Commenting has been disabled for this item.