Hawaii child molester pleads guilty to additional sex-assault charges
By Jim Dooley
Advertiser Staff Writer
Convicted child molester Michael Stephens, who fled the country for 14 years and is now serving a 20-year prison sentence here, pleaded guilty this morning to additional sex-assault charges.
Stephens, 57, appeared before Circuit Judge Randal Lee to plead guilty to one felony and two misdemeanor counts of sexually assaulting an underage boy here in the early 1990s.
When he was originally tried on the charges, a Circuit Court found him guilty of serving liquor to a minor but could not reach a verdict on the molestation charges.
Stephens fled the state in 1994 while awaiting retrial in that case as well as probation revocation proceedings for an earlier sex-assault conviction.
Stephens was recaptured in October 2008 in Mexico.
Last year Judge Lee revoked his probation and ordered him to serve 20 years behind bars.
That ruling came after Stephens admitted that he had been “a seducer of young men” but claimed to be a reformed man.