Wagoner County County Commissioner James Hanning Under Investigation by the OSBI For Child Molestation
You will recall the story of the court case in Wagoner County where a sitting County Commissioner stands accused of looting an LLC set up to manage rental properties. In the deposition of one part time office worker, the accused's own stepdaughter, Wagoner County Commissioner James Hanning was accused of molesting his stepdaughter starting when she was in grade school. The transcript was chilling, including the ADA for Cherokee County, Eric Jordan's advice to "get some counseling for that". No law enforcement report made, just a friendly bit of advice for the 24 year old woman that broke down during deposition and recounted the tale of abuse.
One source that needs to remain anonymous gave the age of eight years old as the age when the abuse started. You will recall that a sitting Cherokee County ADA was representing Commissioner Hanning in the lawsuit as he was working the case before he was hired on as an ADA in Wagoner County. Now that is a state law that allows lawyers employed by the state to complete their case loads after being hired but is it a good law?
The molestation was reported to the child's mother, married at that time to Hanning and still married at this writing, an aunt, and numerous friends. Yet the child received no help and what is an eight year old to believe other than it must be something normal and deserved if your own mother does nothing about it. And the now 24 year old that testified at that deposition on the 28th day of June 2019 got to sit there and see a sitting ADA and several other attorneys and a court reporter hear of the abuse and still nothing got done. One would imagine that she might still believe that she somehow had it coming if no one stepped up to get justice.
We know that Eric Jordan, the Cherokee County ADA did nothing for three months, he even appears to have withheld the accusation from his boss, the D.A.. One day after our story aired that D.A. did in fact do the right thing by turning the case over to the OSBI where it was accepted for investigation.
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| Wagoner County Sheriff Elliot |
We get it, it was an old crime/accusation, not information of an ongoing crime, so a lawyer might have plenty of legal cover for not reporting this client to the law. But when you factor in that the lawyer was a sitting Cherokee County ADA.... if this was indeed legal to not report the crime it certainly wasn't ethical or moral. After all, we understand that there is another child of that same age in the Hanning home. After explaining the details to a social worker/psychologist I mentioned that perhaps the child being blood might keep her safe only to be told that that wasn't always the case.
It is perhaps time to change that state law that allows those hired as ADA or D.A.s to continue to work in private practice.
