BENTON COUNTY, ARKANSAS, Ark. — A Lowell man pleaded guilty to over a dozen sex crimes involving children in court on Dec. 2, landing him 140 years in the Arkansas Department of Corrections.
Juan Medina, 30, will be eligible for parole after 40 years and must register as a sex offender. He is prohibited from contacting the victims or their families and from having any unsupervised contact with minors.
Medina pleaded guilty to the following charges on Monday:
- Three counts of human trafficking
- Five counts of rape
- Second-degree sexual assault
- Internet stalking of a child
- Three counts of engaging children in sexually explicit conduct for use in visual or print medium
- Three counts of first-degree computer exploitation of a child
- Three counts of distributing, possessing, or viewing child sex abuse material
Although Medina was expected to go to trial on Tuesday, he avoided it at the request of the victims' families.
"While I don’t think the defendant deserves to ever be released from prison, this plea saved three children from having to testify about the depraved ways in which Medina offended them and allows them to begin to heal and put these traumatic crimes behind them," Benton County Prosecuting Attorney Josh Robinson said. "He will be 70 years old before he will get out of prison. For these reasons, I am happy with the result."
The investigation into Medina began after officers received a report of a possible sexual assault on June 10, according to a social media post by the Lowell Police Department.
Detectives gathered witness and victim statements and uncovered electronic evidence, leading to Medina's arrest.
Robinson thanked the Lowell Police Department, Rogers Police Department, the Northwest Arkansas FBI Human Trafficking Task Force, and nonprofit organization Into the Light for their work on this case.
"The work of investigators and the courageous cooperation of the victims made it possible to remove a child predator from our community," Robinson said.
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