Warrant issued for former Boyceville man facing multiple felonies related to sex crimes against children

By LeAnn R. Ralph

MENOMONIE  —  An arrest warrant has been issued for a former Boyceville man facing multiple felony charges related to sex crimes against children.

Ted Lopez, 39, failed to show up for a hearing in Dunn County Circuit Court July 17.

Lopez’s attorney, Charles S. Huff, said he did not know why Lopez was not in court.

Huff said he’d had communication with Lopez the previous Friday and it was not a matter of Lopez not knowing when the court appearance was scheduled.

Judge Rod Smeltzer said the court had received a letter asking for a continuation in the case, but in felony cases, continuations are not granted.

According to online court records, Lopez is charged with the repeated sexual assault of the same child (with at least three violations of first degree sexual assault); child enticement with sexual contact; exposing a child to harmful material; child sexual exploitation (videos; records; etc.); causing mental harm to a child; causing a child less than 13 years of age to view or listen to sexual activity; and possession of child pornography.

Judge Smeltzer issued a warrant for Lopez’s arrest and then also scheduled a bail forfeiture hearing for September 11 at 9 a.m.

In the meantime, Judge Smeltzer said, Huff should contact his client and tell him to “get to court.”

During a May 22 court hearing, Judge Smeltzer added a $5,000 cash bail to the $50,000 cash bail set in a previous case.

In the first of the Dunn County cases, bail was set at $50,000 in October of 2016. Lopez posted the cash bail on January 11.

Lopez was in custody at the time of the May 22 court hearing.

According to online court records, Lopez posted $3,750 in cash toward bail June 13 and posted $1,250 in cash June 15.

Dunn County District Attorney Andrea Nodolf had asked for a $100,000 cash bail at the May hearing on top of the other bail amounts.

According to the criminal complaint in the second of the two cases involving young boys, between January 1, 2010, and December 31, 2014, Lopez allegedly committed repeated sexual assault involving the same child, Victim #2, in the Village of Boyceville.

The alleged victim was nine years old at the time of the last sexual assault.

Court records list Lopez’s current address as Tainter Street in Menomonie.

On August 30, 2016, while executing a search warrant at Lopez’s home in Menomonie, a computer was seized. In addition to a number of documents that identified Lopez as the owner of the computer, the hard-drive also contained 3,000 images of child pornography, according to the complaint.

During a forensic interview at the Chippewa Valley child Advocacy Center in Eau Claire, the boy said he was five or six years old when Lopez showed him pornography on a tablet computer.

The boy described a variety of inappropriate sexual contact that allegedly occurred, including anal and oral intercourse.

Lopez was convicted of felony possession of marijuana in September of 2014, and Nodolf is invoking a section of state statute that would increase the prison time for Lopez, if convicted, because he is a repeat offender.

Nodolf also is seeking to place Lopez, if convicted, on lifetime supervision as a serious sex offender.