BENTON - A former Benton Police Department lieutenant during an arraignment hearing Monday pleaded innocent to charges that he raped and sexually assaulted a boy for a decade, the specially appointed prosecuting attorney said.
Monte Hodge, 42, pleaded innocent to three rape charges and two second-degree sexual-assault charges in Courtroom 3 in the Saline County Courthouse, Lonoke County Prosecutor Chuck Graham said. Special-appointed Judge John Langston set Hodge’s trial for Sept. 9-12.
Hodge surrendered to authorities Jan. 22 on one rape charge and is out on bond. He is accused of raping and sexually assaulting a boy for about a decade, according to the arrest affidavit.
The boy reported the allegations at 17 when he ran away from home to go to the Cooper-Anthony Mercy Child Advocacy Center in Hot Springs on Oct. 25. Hospital officials took the allegations to the Arkansas State Police’s Crimes Against Children Division.
Hodge began sexually assaulting the boy when he was 7, the boy told investigators. He started out touching the boy and forcing the boy to touch him, but three years later, Hodge began having sex with the boy, according to the affidavit.
When the boy was 13, Hodge threatened to kill anyone who “helped me if I told anyone what he was doing to me,” the boy told investigators. When the boy was 15 or 17, Hodge forced him to perform a sexual act in Hodge’s parked truck near Bauxite, the affidavit states.
“[Hodge] has also put a gun in my mouth and told me to kill myself [about two years ago],” the boy told investigators. “I pulled the trigger but nothing happened.”
The boy told two adults a number of months before the investigation started, but begged them not to tell anyone, he said in the affidavit, adding that it took him so long to report the purported rapes because he was scared.
The boy has had to describe Hodge’s genitals to investigators.
During a November interview with state police special agents, Hodge told investigators he “never sexually molested the juvenile,” the affidavit states. That same day, Hodge took a polygraph test during which the agents asked whether he had any sexual contact with the boy.
He failed the polygraph test, as investigators concluded that “a decision of Deception Indicated could be reached,” the affidavit states.
The day after the interview, Hodge told a Police Department colleague that the state police didn’t believe him and that he wasn’t sure whether he passed the polygraph, according to the affidavit. The colleague said Hodge would only fail if he lied.
Hodge is an 18-year veteran of the Police Department and was placed on administrative leave Oct. 26. He has since been fired, Graham said, though he didn’t know when. A Police Department spokesman could not be reached late Monday afternoon.
Hodge’s attorney, Bobby Digby, did not return a message Monday.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 02/25/2014