photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Cormick Gabriel Ferrell is pictured during a preliminary hearing on Feb. 24, 2023. Ferrell was ordered to stand trial on one count of aggravated indecent liberties with a child between the ages of 14 and 16.

A Lawrence man accused of trafficking two children was ordered to stand trial Friday in Douglas County District Court after a woman testified that he also sexually abused her when she was a teenager.

The man, Cormick Gabriel Ferrell, 44, faces one count of aggravated indecent liberties with a child between the ages of 14 and 16, according to charging documents in that case. The incident is alleged to have occurred between August 2016 and May 2017.

In another case, Ferrell is charged with two counts of aggravated human trafficking, which are off-grid felonies that could result in a life sentence if he is convicted. He is scheduled for trial in that case on March 31, as the Journal World previously reported. Ferrell is alleged to have provided two children under the age of 14 to be used in forced labor, involuntary servitude or sexual gratification of another person between April 2014 and August 2017. The children were 7 and 6 years old when the crimes allegedly began. Then-Senior Assistant District Attorney Seth Brackman argued at a preliminary hearing in November 2021 that Ferrell allowed them to be assaulted in exchange for rent.

During a preliminary hearing on Friday, the woman, now 20, testified that as a teenager she had accompanied Ferrell on a job he had undertaken in his handyman business. She said that she had fallen asleep on a couch while he worked and woke up to him touching her inappropriately. She said she then jumped up and ran out of the residence.

She testified that she told her mom about the incident and that her mom said she would “deal with it” — but the mother never did “deal with it,” and the girl moved out of state a few months after the incident.

When asked by Deputy District Attorney Joshua Seiden why she didn’t report the incident to police at that time, she said, “I was scared that maybe he would come after me.”

The woman reported the incident a few years later, in May 2022, after she was questioned about alleged victims in Ferrell’s other case. The woman’s case was filed in September 2022.

Judge Sally Pokorny on Friday scheduled Ferrell for trial on the newer charge for May 30 but said that she would consider a motion to combine Ferrell’s two cases into one since most of the witnesses will be the same. The deadline for the motion to combine is March 17, before Ferrell’s trial for human trafficking on March 27.