photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Mark Gridley appears at his competency hearing Thursday, May 8, 2025, in Douglas County District Court.

As expected, multiple new child sex crime charges have been filed against a former Prairie Park Elementary speech pathologist.

In an amended complaint filed by the Douglas County District Attorney’s Office, Mark Gridley, 61, is now facing 14 charges, including seven counts of aggravated indecent liberties with a child and seven counts of kidnapping. He had originally been charged with one count of each, but police have long said that they believed more children had been victimized, and prosecutors indicated in May that more charges would be coming.

In the new complaint, the initials of seven children are listed as victims, ranging in age from 6 or 7 to 10 or 11. The complaint provides only birth years, not months. All of the charges are listed as having occurred on Feb. 6 or Feb. 7 of this year.

Gridley is accused of having abused the young students under the guise of a speech therapy “test” while they were blindfolded and their hands were tied, as the Journal-World has reported.

Deputy District Attorney David Greenwald said at Gridley’s competency hearing in May that the state — ahead of a scheduled July 29 preliminary hearing — planned to amend the charges against Gridley after reviewing 5,000 pages of evidence in the case. That hearing has now been delayed to three days in the fall: Oct. 2,3 and 6.

Gridley, who had worked at Prairie Park since August 2021, was arrested on Feb. 8 and was subsequently fired by the Lawrence school district. He is being held in the Douglas County Jail on a $1.5 million bond.

Judge Amy Hanley in May deemed him competent to stand trial.

The competency evaluation — to determine whether Gridley was able to understand the proceedings against him and to participate in his own defense — was requested by Gridley’s attorney, Vanessa Riebli, and the state did not object. Both parties accepted the findings in the evaluation, whose contents, while not publicly available, did not indicate any psychological impairment that would render Gridley incompetent.

Since his arrest, his spouse has filed for divorce and a civil suit has been filed against the Lawrence school district on behalf of a 6-year-old girl claiming that the district is vicariously liable for Gridley’s conduct and was negligent in hiring, retaining and supervising him.