photo by: Douglas County Sheriff's Office

Preston Meier Jones

A Manhattan man originally charged with raping a 16-year-old girl and filming it pleaded no contest on Monday to a lesser crime as part of a deal with the state.

The man, Preston Meier Jones, 22, was originally charged with one count of rape, one count of sexual exploitation of a child and one count of distributing alcohol to a minor, all felonies, according to charging documents. The charges relate to an incident on Jan. 3, 2022, and all involve the same then 16-year-old victim.

Jones pleaded no contest on Friday to one felony count of attempted aggravated battery. The state, represented by Senior Assistant District Attorney Ricardo Leal, asked the court to make a finding that the crime was sexually motivated and to order Jones to register as a sex offender for 15 years. Leal said that Jones took the girl to a secluded location to commit the crime.

Leal said that Jones also has a pending misdemeanor DUI from February 2023 and that Jones has agreed to plead guilty or no contest as part of the plea agreement but that the DUI case will be resolved after the battery case is sentenced. The state then moved to dismiss the remaining charges as part of the plea agreement.

Judge Amy Hanley accepted Jones’ plea and said that with the reduced charge she will be required by state law to sentence Jones to probation with an underlying prison sentence no less than 17 months. Leal said the state was recommending an underlying term of 19 months. He said that the state believes Jones has no previous criminal history.

The sexual exploitation charge was originally charged as a high-level felony, which, if the defendant were convicted, could have resulted in a minimum 4.5-year sentence in prison, while the rape charge could have resulted in a minimum 12-year sentence, according to state law.

Jones’ attorney, Dakota Loomis, then asked the court to lift Jones’ pretrial conditions, including a GPS ankle monitor and house arrest, which Hanley agreed to. Hanley then scheduled Jones to be sentenced on Aug. 15. Jones is currently free on a $15,000 bond.

According to an affidavit in support of Jones’ arrest, the alleged rape was reported on Feb. 15, 2022, to a Eudora school resource officer, who passed it along to Eudora Police. The victim told police that she and Jones, then 19, dated from October 2021 to January 2022 and at first had a good relationship but that toward the end of the relationship Jones became “very manipulative and on several occasions became physically abusive.”

In the early morning of Jan. 3, 2022, the girl had sneaked out of her house to meet Jones in an empty house, where the two began drinking alcohol, she told police. She said she remembered engaging in consensual sex with Jones but at one point she started to pass out and crawled away from Jones, but he followed her and continued to perform sexual acts on her. The next thing the girl said she could remember was Jones waking her up telling her that they had to leave, according to the affidavit.

Days later, the girl was with Jones and went through his phone, where she found a video of the two engaged in sex from that night. The girl retained the video and later provided it to police. An officer watched the video and noted that the girl was “heavily intoxicated” and was slurring her words and at times appeared to be in pain during sex before she crawled away from Jones and fell asleep, according to the affidavit. The officer then wrote that while the girl was asleep, Jones violated her in several different ways in the video.

An arrest affidavit is a sworn document detailing the probable cause behind a person’s arrest. Allegations contained in affidavits have not been proved in court.