PANAMA CITY — Springfield police have arrested a man suspected of raping a child for the second time since 2010.
Larry Jacob Stanfill was arrested Thursday after a father brought his 7-year-old girl to the hospital when she complained a man had reached in her underwear at her babysitter’s house.
The child went to the Gulf Coast Children’s Advocacy Center for a medical examination and an interview. She said a man named “Larry” touched her twice while she sat on his lap, and she said he concealed what he was doing when her father arrived and resumed when he left the room.
Stanfill is charged with sexual battery on a child under 12, a capitol crime that carries the possibility of a life sentence if he’s convicted.
It’s not Stanfill’s first arrest. In October, 2010, he was charged with lewd and lascivious molestation for a similar crime against a different child. But after spending more than a year in jail awaiting trial, he was released and sentenced to five years of probation when he pleaded no contest to felony battery.
“There was a lot of frustration because the prosecutor was kind of hamstrung,” said Chief Assistant State Attorney Greg Wilson, he said. Wilson didn’t remember what difficulties the prosecutor faced, but he said under the circumstances they felt the plea deal was “the best we could get.”
Sex crimes with child victims are notoriously difficult to prosecute, officials with the Department and Families and the Gulf Coast Children’s’ Advocacy Center said Friday. Statewide, less than 2 percent of perpetrators of sex crimes against children are convicted, said Lori Allen, who said she remembered Stanfill’s first case.
The plea deal in 2010 required Stanfill to undergo sex offender therapy, but he was not legally designated a sex offender, Wilson said.