A judge on Monday ruled that she will reduce by half a $1.5 million bond for a man facing more than a dozen charges involving alleged sex crimes against seven students at Prairie Park Elementary School.

Mark E. Gridley, 61, a speech pathologist, had been working at Prairie Park since 2021. A police affidavit alleges that Gridley used the guise of a test to abuse students in his office during school hours.

Gridley was arrested and charged in February with one count of aggravated indecent liberties with a child younger than 14 and one count of kidnapping. On July 9, the Douglas County district attorney’s office added six more counts of indecent liberties and six more counts of kidnapping based on information gathered from additional Prairie Park students.

Gridley has been in custody at the Douglas County jail since Feb. 8. Defense attorney Vanessa Riebli told Douglas County District Judge Amy Hanley last month that due to his financial circumstances, in this case a $1.5 million bond was the equivalent of no bond. He would likely have to pay a bondsman $150,000 to be released.

The bond of $750,000 means Gridley would likely have to pay a bondsman $75,000 to be released from jail.

In support of her request to lower the bond, Riebli had cited similar cases in Douglas County where a defendant facing similar charges was held on $250,000 bond, meaning the defendant would likely have to pay a bondsman $25,000. Bonds higher than that are usually reserved for cases involving homicide, she said.

Hanley had sought additional information and had delayed her decision on the bond motion. She said she wanted to make a ruling consistent with other cases in Douglas County.

On Monday, Hanley said the proposal for Gridley to live at his home was “not a workable solution for any kind of pretrial supervision” and that the situation was “problematic.”

She said some other housing possibilities were options she’d had pretrial release staff members investigate, and “there has been concern expressed with each of those” involving the residences’ locations relative to schools.

Riebli said that with every placement they’d suggested — now five — “I don’t know how there’s going to be a viable location” because all are being rejected. She said Gridley had not been convicted and was essentially being held without bond.

“I think if my client’s wife and family are willing to buy a house so he can bond out, that shows that he is not a flight risk,” Riebli said.

Hanley said the defense’s proposal was $100,000 bond with house arrest supervision, and she was not comfortable with that bond level with the housing options that had been proposed.

District Attorney Dakota Loomis said the state believed the bond of $1.5 million was appropriate. He said there were 19 interviews of children in this case, and “the scope of potential contacts and potential conflicts here is very wide.”

Hanley said she’d reviewed pretrial supervision guidelines and compared this case with other cases. She said she believed the bond should be lowered based on this specific case, and very high bonds are typically associated with homicide cases.

Hanley said she was not convinced there was no flight risk based on the severity of the case. That, in consideration with Gridley’s “position of authority over young children,” helped her make her decision.

She said bond must be set in every case, and she’d given a lot of thought to what was appropriate. She said she believed $750,000 was fitting for a case of this nature.

If released, Gridley would be subject to pretrial monitoring, and he would be ordered to have no contact with children. He must give up his passport. He can have no firearms of any kind, and he cannot use drugs or alcohol.

He would have GPS monitoring with exclusion zones, including all public school grounds and addresses of families involved in the case, and if he removes his ankle monitor or goes into an exclusion zone, his bond would be revoked. Hanley said the public school distinction was only because she did not have the ability to identify all private schools, but if Gridley were to end up in a private school, “that would be a problem.”

Hanley said the exclusion zones would be tied to specific addresses, but if there was a concern about Gridley driving by any addresses of witnesses, she was sure the prosecution would alert her to that.

The pretrial monitoring order will list the addresses that Gridley cannot visit. Hanley said that document will be sealed, which is not typical.

Defendants in criminal cases should be presumed not guilty unless they are convicted.

Mackenzie Clark (she/her), reporter/founder of The Lawrence Times, can be reached at mclark@lawrencekstimes.com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.

• Bluesky
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• LinkedIn

More coverage:

MORE …

Latest Lawrence news:

MORE …