photo by: Mugshot courtesy of the Kansas Sex Offender Registry

Trey Gibson is pictured with the Douglas County Judicial and Law Enforcement Center.

A man who was put on probation after sexually assaulting a child – and who subsequently violated that probation four times – will now have to serve his underlying prison sentence of 10-plus years.

The man, Trey L. Gibson, was handcuffed and locked up Thursday afternoon immediately after Chief Judge Mark Simpson revoked his probation. Simpson declared, “It’s clear to the court that he is unwilling or unable to comply with probation.”

Simpson noted that Gibson in 2022 had “committed a very serious felony offense against a … child” and that he had been given numerous opportunities to complete his 5-year probation stint, but had consistently failed to stick with sex-offender and substance-abuse treatment programs and to refrain from using illegal drugs, among other probation missteps.

photo by: Contributed

Douglas County Judge Mark Simpson

Gibson’s probation had been reinstated three times by Judge Stacey Donovan after he was accused of violating it. A fourth time was apparently a bridge too far for Simpson.

Gibson was convicted of one count of aggravated indecent liberties with a child and one count of felony criminal threat after he pleaded no contest to the two charges in April 2022, when he was 20 years old. Multiple more serious charges were dropped as part of the plea deal, as the Journal-World reported.

At his preliminary hearing, the victim testified that she had met up with Gibson when she was 14 to smoke marijuana at Lyons Park in North Lawrence. She said that Gibson demanded she get in his car, showing her what she believed to be a shotgun. Gibson then drove her to the parking garage next to the Lawrence Public Library and sexually assaulted her, she testified.

Judge Donovan – in a sentence that was so abhorrent to the state that it vowed to appeal – gave Gibson 10-plus years, but then suspended that to probation, citing Gibson’s age, mental health history, network of support and history of childhood trauma as substantial and compelling reasons to depart from state sentencing guidelines.

photo by: Contributed

Douglas County Judge Stacey Donovan

Donovan acknowledged at the time that her probation order was “a very large leap of faith” by the court.

Then-Senior Assistant District Attorney Nicholas Vrana had pointed to Gibson’s prior cases as a juvenile and said that counting those cases, Gibson “has abused three women in this community” and had never been sentenced to prison.

“How many more must he abuse before he goes to prison?” Vrana said at the time.

Judge Simpson noted Thursday that Gibson had been ordered over the years to serve several shorter stints in jail for probation violations, totaling 53 days in custody, but those stints of incarceration had apparently little effect. He said that as recently as last month Gibson had left a treatment program with a fourth probation violation hanging over his head.

While noting that Gibson’s life experience had included multiple mental health diagnoses and “horrific abuse as a child,” Simpson said the community still had a “reasonable expectation that those on probation should follow the law.”

After Simpson ordered him to prison, Gibson hugged his significant other for a long time as the two said “I love you” and cried. A small group of devoted supporters from Gibson’s church, who have attended most of his hearings through the years, appeared to gasp when the prison order was given, then quietly left the courtroom.