photo by: Bremen Keasey

Kyle Elder (left) appearing in Douglas County Circuit Court on Thursday morning with his appointed defense attorney, Hatem Chahine. Elder accepted a plea agreement, pleading no contest to two counts of abuse of a child, both felonies.

A violent sex offender from New York accepted a plea agreement from prosecutors in Douglas County District Court on Thursday, avoiding a jury trial that was scheduled for next month.

Kyle Elder, 35, pleaded no contest to two counts of aggravated abuse of a child, both felonies. Under the plea agreement, Senior Assistant District Attorney Ricardo Leal said that prosecutors dismissed other charges that Elder was facing “for simplicity’s sake.”

Leal said if the case went to trial, the state would have presented evidence that on or between July 4 and Aug. 17, 2024, Elder on two occasions knowingly caused “great bodily harm, abusive head trauma, permanent disability or disfigurement” to a victim that would have been 14 years old at the time, the basis for the two counts.

Elder, who was represented by defense attorney Hatem Chahine, had previously pleaded not guilty in May to 10 counts of sexual exploitation of a child and one count of electronic solicitation, as the Journal-World reported. Judge Amy Hanley had scheduled the trial to begin on Dec. 8.

Hanley accepted Elder’s no contest plea on Thursday and told Elder that under state sentencing guidelines, he could be sentenced to 289 months in prison — about 24 years — based on his prior criminal history.

According to allegations in an arrest affidavit in the case, which Hanley released in May over objections by both the state and the defense, Elder exchanged thousands of lewd messages, including sexually graphic photos, videos and phone calls, with a Lawrence 14-year-old last summer and made plans to travel here for the purposes of statutorily raping her.

Elder was on supervised release in New York for a sex crime at the time he was allegedly interacting with the Lawrence girl. He was convicted in 2015 of one count of use of a child under 17 years old in a sexual performance and one count of second-degree course of sexual conduct against a 5-year-old child. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and is currently serving 10 years of post-release supervision. He is listed as a violent sexual offender on the New York registry.

Elder’s sentencing hearing was scheduled for Jan. 9, 2026 at 3 p.m.