Published: November 05, 2009 12:24 am      

Man pleads guilty in Greenup sex case

Greenup — A Portsmouth man pleaded guilty Monday in Greenup Circuit Court to sexually abusing his former girlfriend’s children.

Dustin Wood averted going to trial by entering guilty pleas on two counts of first-degree sexual abuse. The trial was to have begun Monday.

Wood, 22, was charged with sodomy and sexual abuse. In pleading guilty to the two counts of sexual abuse, he agreed to accept a five-year prison sentence on each count, for a total of 10 years, with the terms to run consecutively, Greenup County Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Melvin C. Leonhart said.

Wood will have to serve 15 months in prison before he will be eligible to meet with the parole board, Leonhart said. He will also have to register as a convicted sex offender after he gets out of prison.

Wood’s former girlfriend, Christina Craft, also known as Christina St. Claire, was convicted in May of rape and sodomy for sexually abusing her daughters and for forcing them to perform sexual acts on Wood and on another former boyfriend, Buford Henderson, 40, of South Shore.

Craft, 30, of South Shore, was sentenced to 20 years. She is serving her sentence at the Otter Creek Correctional Center at Wheelwright, according to the Kentucky Online Offender Lookup System.

In convicting Craft, jurors found she made her daughters, who were 5 and 6 at the time of the abuse, place their mouths on her genitalia and threatened to punish them if they did not do likewise to Henderson and Wood.

Craft’s attorneys maintained the girls were coerced into making false allegations against their mother by their paternal grandparents, with whom they were placed after the state Cabinet for Health and Family Services removed them from Craft’s home because of her refusal to end her relationship with Henderson.

Craft and Wood dated during a period in which she and Henderson were broken up, according to testimony.

Henderson also is charged with sodomy and sexual abuse. His trial is scheduled for Jan. 25. It was originally to have been in August, but was delayed after Henderson switched attorneys at the last minute, hiring Michael Curtis of Ashland and dismissing his previous counsel, public defender Steve Geurin.

KENNETH HART can be reached at khart@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2654.