Paintsville woman pleads guilty in sex case

09/24/2008 - PAINTSVILLE — A Paintsville woman originally charged with working in complicity with her husband to rape, sodomize, and sexually abuse three young girls accepted a plea deal with prosecutors and pleaded guilty Friday to lesser charges.Florene Stambaugh, 37, pleaded guilty in Johnson Circuit Court to two counts of criminal abuse and one count of perjury. The latter charge is in connection to false testimony she gave during her husband's trial earlier this year.In exchange for her guilty plea to the charges, the commonwealth's attorney's office recommended an eight-year prison sentence, which includes five years on the first count of criminal abuse, two years on the second count and one year on the perjury charge.Johnson Circuit Judge John David Preston scheduled formal sentencing for Oct. 17.Florene Stambaugh; her husband, Larry Stambaugh; and another man, Larry T. Hayden, also of Paintsville, were indicted in October 2007 on various sex-related charges involving children.In March of this year, Hayden, 30, pleaded guilty to first-degree rape with forceful compulsion, two counts of first-degree sodomy with forceful compulsion, and two counts of sexual abuse. He was later sentenced to 10 years in prison.Hayden was accused of raping a girl under the age of 10 for over a year beginning from Aug. 1, 2006, until Aug.13, 2007.Following a trial in July, Larry Stambaugh was convicted on four counts of sexual abuse involving three minor girls. He had been charged with rape, sodomy and sexual abuse, but the jury found him guilty of only the sexual abuse charges.The jury recommended a 40-year sentence, but Judge Preston later lowered the sentence to 20 years after Stambaugh's attorney argued that a state statute sets the maximum penalty for sexual abuse at 20 years.Prosecutors claim Florene Stambaugh lied during her testimony at her husband's trial, and a local grand jury later indicted her on a perjury charge.