photo by: Douglas County Sheriff's Office

Lorene Rose Martins

The former wife of a convicted child molester has pleaded no contest to aggravated endangerment of a child after she was accused of hiding her husband’s sex crimes from police and telling the survivor to lie.

Lorene Rose Martins, 48, of Lawrence, entered the plea on Sept. 9 to two felony counts of aggravated endangerment of a child. As part of the agreement the state dismissed a third charge of intimidation of a witness and withdrew a motion for upward departure in sentencing. The motion had asked the court to depart from the Kansas Sentencing Guidelines and to give Martins a more severe punishment than what is recommended, according to the plea agreement.

The charges Martins is now convicted of come with a recommended sentence of five to 17 months each, but, with no criminal history, Martins is expected to receive probation, according to the plea agreement.

As previously reported by the Journal-World, the charges relate to a November 2017 incident where she allegedly failed to contact police after her husband, Timothy Glen Martins, 48, had engaged in aggravated indecent liberties with a child and then allegedly told the victim to lie to police about the incident.

Timothy Martins was convicted in May of four counts of aggravated indecent liberties with a child and one count of indecent liberties with a child. During his trial he told the jury that he regularly cuddled with young girls in their home while the girls were naked.

During Timothy’s trial he testified that he told Lorene that he crossed the line with one of the children; he said he lied to Lorene, saying it was an accident, and she did not report him to authorities.

The victim testified that police had asked questions about Timothy abusing her but that Lorene had pleaded with the victim to lie.

“So I did,” the victim said. “I told them I made it up.”

Martins waived her right to a preliminary hearing and entered into criminal mediation with the state in July. She was first charged in January of 2021, but the charges were dismissed in February of 2022, while the state was preparing its case against her husband; they were refiled in May of 2022.

Her original 2021 charges included a charge for failure to report an assault. The state alleged that Lorene was a licensed counselor and hence a mandatory reporter of child abuse, but her defense attorney, Dustin Curry, argued that Lorene was not a licensed therapist at the time of the incident, according to court records.

Martins acquired her license to be a professional counselor in January of 2019, little more than a year after the 2017 incident in which she told the survivor to lie. She is registered as a “licensed professional counselor” and is still listed as active, according to the Kansas Behavioral Sciences Regulatory Board.

The Journal-World reached out to the regulatory board, and a board representative who declined to be identified said that he could not say whether Martins’ convictions would result in the loss or suspension of her license because every case is unique and requires a full investigation but that the board does consider person-felony convictions when determining whether to renew or revoke a license. Martins must inform the board within a “reasonable period of time” that she has been convicted, according to board regulations. Her license is up for renewal in January of 2023.

Martins divorced her husband, a former Douglas County employee and Shawnee County corrections officer, in May. He was sentenced in June to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 25 years.

She is currently free on a $5,000 bond and is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 6.