photo by: Douglas County Sheriff's Office

Tiara Nicole Dillon

A woman who was accused of felony child abuse last winter took a plea deal Friday to misdemeanor battery and was given probation.

The woman, Tiara Nicole Dillon, was charged in February 2025 with torturing or beating a child under the age of 18. The child in question is now 10 years old, and the incident occurred on Dec. 30, 2024.

Dillon was set to have a preliminary hearing last month, but that hearing was delayed when attorneys told Judge Sally Pokorny that they were working on a resolution.

That resolution came Friday when Dillon pleaded no contest to the lesser crime of misdemeanor battery. Pokorny accepted that plea and sentenced Dillon to six months in the county jail, suspended to a year of probation.

What Dillon is alleged to have done to the child is not publicly known because the preliminary hearing, at which evidence would have been put on, never happened, and on Friday Dillon’s attorney, Gary West, simply stipulated that there was a factual basis for the battery plea, so the facts supporting the plea were never recited into the public record.

When given the chance to speak during her sentencing, Dillon declined to do so, offering no apology.

West said Dillon had “worked diligently” with the Department for Children and Families.

Dillon will be required to undergo a domestic violence assessment and, if ordered, to complete a batterer’s intervention program.

When Pokorny told Dillon that she would have to stay clear of nonprescribed drugs during her probation period, Dillon asked for an exception to continue smoking marijuana. Pokorny denied the exception, telling Dillon that marijuana, medicinal or otherwise, was illegal in Kansas.

As the Journal-World reported, Dillon was accused in 2019 of leaving two toddlers in a freezing car as she drank at a local bar. Those charges were dismissed on March 27, 2020, after the case was reassigned to Behavioral Health Court. In that case, a then 26-year-old Dillon was accused of two felony counts of aggravated endangering of a child and misdemeanor DUI. The children, 2 and 3 years old, were reportedly left unattended in a car late at night outside Playerz Sports Bar, 1910 Haskell Ave., during a polar vortex in which the temperature was 5 degrees with a wind chill of minus 14. The children were not injured, according to police, but had been left alone in the vehicle “without heat for a substantial amount of time” — at least two hours, according to an arrest affidavit — while Dillon was in the bar.

Dillon told Judge James T. George at a Jan. 31, 2019, hearing that she had “made a mistake” and did not mean to hurt her children.

“I love my babies,” she said through tears. “Please don’t take my babies.”