A prosecutor Wednesday morning accused a 68-year-old Douglas County man of sexually assaulting a 4-year-old girl in 2009 at a rural Lawrence day care.

“Sending a child to day care is an everyday fact of life for parents these days,” said Amy McGowan, a chief assistant district attorney. “But in doing so parents have to entrust the most precious thing in their lives, their children, to people they don’t know.”

During opening statements in the trial in District Judge Sally Pokorny’s courtroom Wednesday, McGowan told jurors they would see a recorded interview the girl gave to an investigator and that they would hear about results of DNA evidence linking the defendant to some of the girl’s clothing.

McGowan said the defendant lived on the property in 2009 that was home to the Miles of Smiles Child Daycare Center southwest of Lawrence, but she said he was not responsible for caring for any of the children there.

The man faces one count of aggravated criminal sodomy and aggravated indecent liberties with a child. Prosecutors allege he molested the girl during summer 2009.

His defense attorney told jurors that investigators incorrectly questioned the girl by asking her the same questions over and over. He also said the DNA evidence in the case was suspect.

“It’s about a child’s overactive imagination and — to be quite honest with you — junk science,” defense attorney Branden Bell said.

McGowan said the girl told her mother the man would molest her during nap time at the day care. The girl, who had started attending the day care earlier in the summer, was eventually examined at a hospital, and investigators began looking into the case.

Douglas County Sheriff’s officers arrested the man last March, and the defendant, who has pleaded not guilty in the case, is being held in Douglas County Jail on $50,000 bond.

The girl briefly took the stand Wednesday morning. She told McGowan she either didn’t remember when asked about the events or that she didn’t want to talk about it.

Wednesday afternoon McGowan was scheduled to show jurors a recording of the girl’s 2009 interview with a social worker when she described the man’s alleged actions.

The Journal-World generally does not name sex-crime suspects unless they are convicted.