BRANCH COUNTY — Almost 18 years after Matthew Hicks went to jail for a year for molesting a young girl, he was sentenced to prison as a second offender.
Circuit Judge Bill O'Grady sentenced Hicks to prison for 13 years, six months minimum to a maximum of 22 years, six months.
Hicks, 42, of Coldwater, pleaded no contest to avoid a minimum mandatory 25 years in a plea bargain offered to prevent the young 12-year-old girl from having to testify at trial.
Chief assistant prosecutor Nora Geiger said, "This is not the defendant's first incident. His previous conviction is for the exact same behavior."
Hicks lived with the mother of the girl, who considered him a father. When the mother had to go to work to help support the family, Hicks molested her child, who was 11 at the time.
Hicks spent a year in the Branch County Jail in 2004 in prison for the first crime and was registered as a sex offender.
Geiger said Hicks again groomed this young daughter of another woman. He showed her pornography and sexually abused her, seeing how far he could take the relationship. Geiger labeled Hicks "a sexual predator."
Victim advocate Denise Mack read a pencil-written letter from the victim. "For years, I was so scared to leave my room. I didn't know whether I would have to watch my mom get beat up or end up crying myself to sleep again because of what you did to me."
"I have panic attacks anytime someone touches me. I always have memories rush back to my head like the first time you did it to me," the girl wrote.
Geiger praised the young girl for finally telling her mother in 2020 when she was 12. The prosecutor said the younger sister would have become the next victim if she hadn't.
With a no-contest plea to third-degree criminal sexual contact, Hicks never admitted he did anything. In court, he said, "I stand mute."
Hicks receives 242 days credit for time served pending completion of his case.
