FORT SMITH -- A federal court judge Tuesday accepted the guilty plea of a New Jersey man on charges he transported a 14-year-old girl across state lines for sex, according to court records.
Robert Joseph Butler of Clayton, N.J., pleaded guilty Aug. 29 to sexual assault in violation of Texas law and second-degree sexual assault in violation of Arkansas law as part of a plea agreement with the government. He was scheduled to go on trial last week in federal court on those charges plus a forcible oral sodomy charge in violation of Oklahoma law, according to a plea agreement with the government.
He will be sentenced after a pre-sentence report is completed by the court's probation office, a process that can take six to eight weeks.
According to a set of undisputed facts in the plea agreement, the mother of a 14-year-old Albuquerque, N.M., girl called police in late January or early February after finding Butler hiding in her daughter's closet. She obtained a restraining order against Butler barring further contact with her daughter.
Butler, who was 26 at the time, told authorities after his arrest that he had been communicating with the girl through social media and text messages for more than a year before driving to her home in late 2013.
Despite the restraining order, Butler returned to New Mexico in late March and made arrangements to meet with the girl on March 31 at a bookstore near where she lived, the plea agreement stated. In a car he had borrowed from a friend in Pennsylvania, Butler picked up the girl and drove her to Texas where they had sex in a Texas hotel.
They drove to Oklahoma where they spent two nights in different hotels during which they had sex, according to the plea agreement. They fled from Oklahoma after realizing an Amber Alert had been issued after the girl's disappearance from New Mexico.
They drove into Arkansas where they camped in the Kibler Bottoms east of Van Buren in Crawford County, living out of the car for two weeks, from April 3-17, according to the plea agreement. Butler admitted to having oral sex with the girl while camping at the Kibler Bottoms.
Butler and the girl were found at the Target store parking lot in Fort Smith on April 17. Law enforcement officials were led to the location by information obtained using an Internet protocol address associated with a pinger account.
A pinger is a free cellphone application that allows users to have free text messaging and make free cellphone calls, according to the plea agreement.
State Desk on 09/06/2014