MICHIGAN FUGITIVE FACES JUSTICE FOR 1980’S CHILD MOLESTATION CASE

By DEBRA HAIGHT

BCR Correspondent

Recent action in Berrien County Trial Court includes sentencings and a no contest plea in connection with a March traffic death.

A Florida man who was an adult volunteer at a Boy Scout camp in the Berrien Springs area in the 1980s pleaded no contest to attempted fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct against a victim age 13-15 and was sentenced Monday to probation and jail.

Roland W. Chabot, 70, of Ocala, Florida, will serve two years probation, 60 days in

jail and $925 in fines and costs. He has credit for 22 days already served.

He must register as a sex offender in both Michigan and Florida, not live within 1,000 feet of a school or 500 feet of a park, cannot maintain a social media profile, cannot have contact with anyone age 17 or younger and must execute an electronic computer user agreement to use a computer.

The incidents occurred between June 1, 1986 and Oct. 1, 1987 at a Boy Scout camp on East Snow Road in Oronoko Township.

Berrien County Trial Judge Charles LaSata called it a troubling case as he noted that the male victim reported the abuse to the Boy Scouts in 1992 but that nothing happened until the Boy Scouts changed how they reported such incidents in 2011. Police began investigating in 2013.

LaSata noted that the victim wrote in a victim impact statement that he did not desire vengeance but justice. The victim later said he would be satisfied with Chabot having to register as a sex offender. “I don’t think that precludes justice and I hear the victim’s call for justice,” he said.

In another sentencing, a Galien resident was sent to prison for resisting and obstructing police and violating terms of a 2015 domestic violence probation.

Joseph Ray Baggett, 37, Pardee Road, Galien, pleaded guilty to resisting and obstructing police as a habitual offender and was sentenced to 14 to 36 months in prison. He has credit for 42 days already served and must pay $198.

He also pleaded guilty to violating his probation from a Dec. 16, 2015 domestic violence conviction and was sentenced to 18 months to five years in prison with credit for 386 days already served.

The resisting and obstructing incident occurred March 5 when he resisted a sheriff’s deputy called to the Pardee Road home in Weesaw Township on the domestic violence call. He was given credit for time served, 42 days, and $125 in fines and costs on the domestic violence charge.

A Stevensville young man who broke into his grandparents’ Berrien Township home was sentenced to probation and jail.

Terry Edwin Carlisle, 20, of Stevensville, pleaded guilty to second-degree home

invasion and was sentenced to three years probation, 180 days in jail and $1,258 in fines and costs. He has credit for two days already served.

The incident occurred Jan. 20 at his grandparents’ home on Smith Road in Berrien Township. He took a computer, a clock, jewelry, a television, a camera and coins and sold them to support his drug habit. His grandparents pleaded for mercy and said they had not wanted to press charges against him.

Judge LaSata noted that Carlisle is already on probation in Van Buren County on a drug conviction and faces a new larceny in a building charge. “You went from using marijuana to opiates to meth,” he said. “I don’t believe this self-medicating nonsense. I will send you to prison if you violate your probation. You know you’ve hit rock bottom if you steal from your grandparents.”

In the traffic death case, Berrien Springs High School junior Riley Haygood pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of moving violation causing death. He is scheduled to be sentenced June 4 in Berrien County Trial Court.

Haygood, 17, was driving north on M-139 when he rear-ended another car and pushed that car into the path of a Berrien RESA Blossomland van travelling south. The accident occurred on M-139 near Hinchman Road in northern Oronoko Township.

Karen Lou Johns, 61, of Eau Claire was driving a 2012 Toyota Corolla when her car was hit by the 2005 Chevy Colorado Haygood was driving. She later died on the way to South Bend Memorial Hospital. The impact of Haygood’s vehicle rear-ending Johns’ pushed her car into the path of the Blossomland Ford van travelling southbound.

According to the police report, several of the seven passengers in the van as well as a passenger in Haygood’s vehicle sustained minor injuries. The Blossomland van was on its way back to the Blossomland Learning Center in Berrien Springs at the time of the late morning accident.