GULFPORT – (AP) A judge has ordered a 43-year-old Saucier man to serve 30 years in prison without early release for molesting two girls who were 8 and 9 years old.
The Sun Herald reports Circuit Judge Larry Bourgeois sentenced Clayton Paul Bateman on Thursday after a jury found him guilty on two counts each of sexual battery and unlawful touching of a child for lustful purposes.
Assistant District Attorney Alison Baker said a Harrison County jury deliberated more than an hour before returning verdicts in the three-day trial.
Sheriff’s investigators had arrested Bateman on March 18, 2009, after a relative called 911 to report he had sexually assaulted a 9-year-old family acquaintance. Baker says investigators learned Bateman had also been molesting a second girl for several years.
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