An Oklahoma mother awoke to the sound of her five-year-old daughter screaming in her bedroom. At first, it seemed like the child was in the midst of a bad dream, but it was the start of a living nightmare as the mother rounded the corner into her little girl’s room.
The mom, identified only by the first name Lamanda, said she woke up to the sound of her daughter crying and went to check on her. That’s when she found a strange man on top of the girl, raping her. Lamanda launched into an attack on the intruder, 29-year-old Kyle Hancock, kicking and hitting him until he managed to get away through a kitchen window. But, the hell he would put the mother and child through wasn’t over.
Since Hancock wasn’t known to the family, they only had his physical description to use when reporting the crime to police officers. The assault hit the local news, and a manhunt was underway for the monster. An unnamed woman in the community recognized him from the news report, and he was tracked back to his apartment in Tulsa. Police nabbed the suspect and brought him into custody in a white plastic jumpsuit to preserve evidence on his person, Fox 23 reported.
The 5-year-old girl wasn’t Kyle Hancock’s only victim. He was a convicted sex offender who had not registered his address with police. Hancock picked this particular girl at random because he didn’t want to put someone he knew through that torture. The arresting officer reported that Hancock told a male witness that he was the one who sexually assaulted the girl and that he told the witness, “I have a demon in me.”
“He’s a registered sex offender for a similar offense a few years back,” Sergeant Brandon Wycoff told News On 6. “Guys like this don’t ever need to be on the street again. He shouldn’t have got out as quickly as he did from the first time.”
When the case went to trial, the five-year-old girl testified against Kyle Hancock. As she entered the courtroom, she was surrounded by members of Bikers Against Child Abuse, who attended court with abuse victims, so they won’t feel afraid. She bravely took the stand and talked about the night a man she didn’t know broke into her house and raped her.
The small victim was the first person to take the stand, and the judge cleared the courtroom because the testimony was so sensitive. When they brought out a booster seat for her to sit on in the witness stand, everyone realized just how little and vulnerable she is. While sitting in the booster seat, the little girl, who was wearing a pink dress and little white socks, testified.
“When a child has been through a very traumatic experience, like sexual assault, the child absolutely has the ability to relay that information, to tell the truth about that information. We do everything we can to help the child feel more comfortable. We clear the courtroom so that other spectators are not there, we show the child the courtroom ahead of time,” said Tulsa County Assistant District Attorney Sarah McAmis.
The DA stood between the girl and Hancock as a buffer. The DA said, as hard as testifying can be on a child and their family, it can also give them a sense of power to explain what happened, and in this case, the little girl did a great job. “I was very, very proud of her. She is strong, she is smart and she did an excellent job,” McAmis said.
When it was time for Kyle Hancock to speak, he requested a moment of silence for his victims before praying and asking for the children’s forgiveness. However, his actions were all for show. In letters he wrote from jail, he tried to claim that he committed the crime because he was drugged, then said maybe he had gone temporarily insane, before landing on a third lie, claiming the family framed him, despite the DNA evidence found in the little girl.
Eventually, Hancock confessed, not only to raping the girl and videotaping it on his phone but to molesting many other children who were relatives and kids of his friends. The judge wasn’t accepting any of his excuses and handed down a massive sentence.
Kyle Hancock begged for the minimum sentence of just 15 years behind bars to be cut short with accepting castration. But, the judge didn’t allow that for this pedophile. Instead, he slapped him with the strongest arm of the law, sentencing him to life in prison without parole, so he could hopefully experience firsthand what it feels like to be someone’s victim.
This judge realizes what too many others do not — a child molester cannot be rehabilitated. Better than castration in these cases is the death penalty or a lifetime behind bars so they are permanently removed from society, where they and their dirty hands don’t belong. Children in Oklahoma are safer because this guy will never be able to prey on them again.
