photo by: Douglas County Sheriff's Office

Jason Edward Dallinga

A Lawrence man was sentenced to nearly 30 years in prison on Friday for sex crimes involving a 7-year-old.

The man, Jason Edward Dallinga, 42, was originally charged with four counts of aggravated indecent liberties with a child by engaging in lewd touching to satisfy a sexual desire, according to charging documents. The charges relate to incidents between January 2022 and October 2022, as the Journal-World reported.

Dallinga’s sentencing and plea agreement took several hearings to accomplish. He pleaded guilty in May to one count of aggravated indecent liberties with a child and one count of indecent liberties with a child, and was set to plead in August to another count of aggravated indecent liberties in connection with the same victim.

At the August hearing Dallinga was sentenced to 95 months, or nearly eight years, in prison and was scheduled to enter a plea to the third count in October.

Dallinga returned to court in October, when the state, represented by Chief Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Tatum, and Dallinga’s attorney, Branden Smith, discovered through a presentence investigation that the way they had charged Dallinga triggered a state statute that if he pleaded to the third charge the court would be required to sentence him to life in prison.

Tatum said that she and Smith with input from the victim’s family had worked on the plea and that Dallinga agreed to plead guilty and to spend 29.25 years in prison so long as he did not get a life sentence. Tatum said the goal of the plea agreement was to avoid any circumstance where the victim may have to testify or relive the abuse and that the victim’s family agreed to the terms of the plea.

Dallinga then rescinded his previous plea to two counts of aggravated indecent liberties with a child and one count of indecent liberties with a child, and pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated indecent liberties with a child and one count of aggravated battery.

On Friday, he pleaded to an additional count of indecent liberties with a child as part of a newly filed case and was sentenced in both cases. Dallinga has no prior criminal history that affected his sentence but the way the plea deal was negotiated, by pleading guilty in the first case, the sentence for the second case would be greater.

Judge Stacey Donovan sentenced Dallinga to 61 months, or five years, for the aggravated indecent liberties charge, and 34 months for the aggravated battery charge, for a total of 95 months, or just under eight years.

She then sentenced Dallinga to 128 months, or just over 10.5 years, for the indecent liberties with a child charge. Since Dallinga had been convicted in the first case he was now known as a “persistent sex offender,” for which Kansas law requires the court to double the sentence Dallinga received, increasing it to 256 months, or 21.3 years.

In total, Dallinga was sentenced to 351 months, or 29.25 years in prison. Donovan said he has earned 309 days of time served and his sentence could be reduced by 15% by the Kansas Department of Corrections if he does not violate any rules in prison.

After Dallinga’s sentence is completed sometime around 2050, Dallinga will be required to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life and will also be on parole for the rest of his life.