Eric W. Fields
A Sedalia man has been charged with sexually abusing a boy over about two years.
Eric W. Fields, 45, of the 1800 block of East Seventh Street, was arrested Monday and has been charged in Pettis County Circuit Court with five counts of first-degree attempted statutory sodomy and one count of furnishing or attempting to furnish pornographic material to a minor. He is in custody at the Pettis County Jail on a $250,000 bond, cash or surety.
Fields was convicted in 2015 of possession of child pornography. He was sentenced to 30 days of shock incarceration and five years of probation.
A mother came to the Sedalia Police Department on July 7 to report her 13-year-old son had recently disclosed Fields had sexually abused him. The abuse reportedly took place when the boy was between age 7 and 9 from 2012 to 2014, before Fields’ first arrest.
Detective Travis St. Cyr arrested Fields at 10:50 a.m. Monday after interviewing him at the Sedalia Probation and Parole Office. He filed a probable cause statement with the Pettis County Circuit Court, outlining his investigation into the case.
The boy’s mother made the initial report after confronting her son about watching pornography on his cellphone and tablet, according to the probable cause statement. The boy told her Fields would show him pornography and made him perform sexual acts.
According to the probable cause statement, Child Safe of Central Missouri hosted an interview with the boy July 12 in which he said Fields would make him watch pornographic videos and have him replicate what was done in the videos. He also recounted incidents in which Fields sodomized him and forced him to perform oral sex and manual stimulation.
These incidents occurred on multiple occasions in Fields’ house, garage and the basement of a church in Sedalia, according to the probable cause statement. The boy said Fields forced him to perform oral sex more than once in the main eating area of the church basement when no one else was there.
After the Child Safe interview, St. Cyr spoke with the boy’s mother. She said she didn’t allow Fields around her son after he was arrested on the child pornography charge, so any acts of abuse had to have happened before 2014, according to the statement.
After the pornography arrest, she asked her son if Fields had ever touched him in appropriately. He would “just shrug his shoulders and shake his head.”
St. Cyr interviewed Fields on Monday at the Sedalia Probation and Parole Office. Throughout the interview, Fields denied the abuse and said the accusations were false. He reportedly said the abuse was “sick” and he would never do that.
The detective asked him whether someone who sexually abused a child deserves a second chance, and Fields said yes, according to the statement.
“I asked Eric why (the boy) would all of a sudden say these things occurred if they didn’t,” St. Cyr said in the statement. “I told him I didn’t see what (the boy) would have to gain by making the accusations up since they haven’t seen or talked to each other since 2014 anyway. Eric didn’t know.”
After the interview, St. Cyr arrested Fields and placed him on hold at the Pettis County Jail.
