Serial groper admits he didn’t register as sex offender
Lonnie Sturdivant, who has a long history of convictions for groping women, faces up to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty Thursday to failing to register as a sex offender.
He placed his fate in the hands of a judge who became familiar with Sturdivant’s compulsion nearly four decades ago.
Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Michael J. Holbrook said he was a student at Ohio State University in the late 1970s and worked in a campus library where he had confronted Sturdivant, who was known way back then for his unwelcome touching of female students.
The judge mentioned those long-ago interactions at the beginning of the hearing, but said he already had disclosed them to the defense and prosecution. Neither Assistant Prosecutor Keith McGrath nor defense attorney Michael Philabaun objected to Holbrook handling the case. Philabaun said Sturdivant still thinks that the judge “can be fair and impartial.”
Holbrook scheduled sentencing for Jan. 8.
Sturdivant, 60, also is scheduled for a December hearing in Municipal Court on misdemeanor charges of sexual imposition and aggravated trespassing for incidents in which he is accused of groping one woman in the Capital University library and two women at a bar near the Ohio State University campus.
Sturdivant, who has no permanent address, was released from the county jail on Sept. 19 after serving one year for his most recent string of convictions for groping women. He failed to comply with a requirement that he register as a sex offender within three days of his release, Assistant Prosecutor Keith McGrath said.
Sturdivant told the judge that he went to the sheriff’s office to register but “panicked” and left after realizing that there was a warrant for his arrest.
Just two days after Sturdivant’s release from jail, a Capital student told campus police that a man had grabbed her buttocks twice as she was studying on the second floor of the Blackmore Library. Three hours after that incident, two Ohio State students reported that he fondled them on the buttocks in the Out-RInn bar on Frambes Avenue.
Sturdivant is being held in the county jail on $25,000 bond.