Hoyt resident to be arraigned in February on sex charges

The 13-year-old adopted daugh­ter of a Hoyt resident gave detailed allegations of various sexual ac­tivities between the two of them over a three-year period on Wednesday in Jackson County District Court.

The girl’s testimony spurred District Court Judge Norbert Marek to change one of the four counts against Leon Holloway, 50, from attempted rape to rape before set­ting a date for Holloway’s arraign­ment. Holloway has also been charged with two counts of aggra­vated criminal sodomy and one count of indecent liberties with a child in connection with incidents alleged to have occurred between April 2012 and March 2015 in the Hoyt area.

Holloway, who was originally charged last May and is being rep­resented by Topeka attorney Wil­liam Rork, is next expected to ap­pear in district court on Friday, Feb. 26 for arraignment. He is cur­rently free on bond.

During Wednesday’s preliminary hearing for Holloway, the girl said sexual activity between her and Holloway allegedly began in the spring of 2012 after the two of them left a rural Hoyt home where her adopted mother, Nancy Hollo­way, and her brother, also an adoptee, were living and moved into an apartment in Hoyt.

They lived together in the apart­ment for “a year or two,” she said, alleging that during that time pe­riod, Holloway was inspired by watching pornography to try certain sexual activities of a more graphic nature. Even after the two of them moved to a house in Hoyt with Nancy Holloway and her brother, she said, the sexual activities alleg­edly continued when the two of them were left alone in the house.

The girl alleged that Holloway would demand sexual contact with her — or as she put it, she “did fa­vors for him” — in exchange for something she wanted. She noted one alleged instance in which she had asked permission to watch television and was told she had to have anal sex with him before she was granted television privileges, and even though she said the al­leged act “felt very uncomfort­able,” she went through with it.

When asked by Rork why she didn’t tell Nancy Holloway about the sexual activity, which contin­ued even after the family moved back into a house together, she re­plied, “I was really scared… I thought it was normal.” She later added that her relationship with her adopted mother was “bad” and that she would often use Holloway to get back at her.

The alleged activities had appar­ently ceased in the spring of 2015, she said, after she told a classmate what was going on and was advised to talk to staff at her school, who told her that what was happening was not normal. When she relayed that information to Holloway, she added, he told her that he would kill himself rather than go to jail for the activities because he was “not made for jail.”

Prior to that, the girl said the al­leged sexual activities involving her and Holloway was never brought up outside the two of them, save for some joking between her and her friends. She also said that she did not question whether the activities were normal.

But last April, the girl eventually talked to a representative of the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office about the alleged sexual activities, and eventually she returned to the family home to retrieve some clothes and stay with a friend rather than remain with Holloway. A month later, it was reported, Hol­loway was arrested on a Jackson County district warrant issued as the result of an investigation by the sheriff’s office.

Following the girl’s testimony on Wednesday, Marek said there was probable cause to bind Holloway over on the sodomy and indecent liberties charges. But at the suggestion of Jackson County Attorney Shawna Miller, the attempted rape charge against Holloway was modified and he was bound over on a rape charge.