A 41-year-old Freedom Township man is headed to prison after sexually abusing a teenage girl over a three-year span, with a Portage County judge handing down a 4½-year sentence this week. Kevin Mark New was sentenced by Judge Becky Doherty, closing out a case that began with a far more serious set of charges months earlier.
According to the Record-Courier, New was sentenced to 4½ years in prison after sexually abusing a teenage girl over a three-year period. The outlet reported that Judge Doherty issued the sentence this week in Portage County.
The case had moved through court for months before reaching sentencing. New pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual battery and a single count of child endangerment during a scheduled pretrial hearing in Portage County Court of Common Pleas on October 7, according to Yahoo News. That same report states the offenses took place between August 2022 and August 2025, according to court records.
From Rape Charges to a Guilty Plea
The resolution marked a significant shift from how the case first began. An earlier Record-Courier report said New had been indicted on two counts each of first-degree felony rape and third-degree felony sexual battery, with the indictment handed up on August 20. By the time the case reached its October plea hearing, those charges had been resolved through the guilty plea to sexual battery and child endangerment instead, as reported by the same Yahoo News account of the proceedings.
What Remains Unknown
The record-courier sentencing report does not lay out the judge's reasoning for the 4½-year term, nor does it specify other conditions of the sentence. Those details have not been made public in the reporting reviewed for this story.
