AST: Man charged for molesting 2 generations

Editor's note: There are two men in the Big Lake area with similar names. The man involved in this case is not Harold L. Johnson, who also is known as H. Leonard Johnson.

PALMER - A Big Lake man is facing a dozen serious felonies after allegations surfaced that he sexually abused two generations of Mat-Su Valley girls.

According to an affidavit Alaska State Trooper investigator Toma Caldarea filed at the Palmer Courthouse, the most recent allegations against Lenard Johnson, 54, came to light in June when a 7-year-old girl alleged Johnson had been sexually assaulting her.

Caldarea sat down for an interview with the girl who told the story from the beginning about how she'd been taking pictures of her friends at daycare and told them all about where babies come from and how that happens.

She told Caldarea that she learned all this from Johnson. She described for the trooper exactly what Johnson had done with her in a bedroom at a Big Lake home. In Caldarea's retelling of her story, the acts clearly amount to sex. The girl told the trooper it had happened a dozen times, then specified that a dozen means 12. Caldarea wrote that he was able to determine it had happened from December 2010 to June 2011.

Later, Caldarea talked to the girl's sister who had previously told him that Johnson had never touched her.

"I lied," she told the trooper this time. "From the time I was 14 years old to 17 years old, I was molested by him and what she describes is exactly what happened with us."

Still later, Caldarea talked to the girls' mother, who had similarly denied ever having been molested by Johnson.

"She disclosed that she had not been honest about Lenard Johnson and she described that she was also sexually abused by him from the age of 14 to 17," the trooper writes.

Troopers recorded conversations Johnson had and, Caldarea said, found that he "made admissions" and "affirmed allegations" in the cases of the younger two victims.

Caldarea writes that in 1993 Johnson was charged with sexually abusing children and then convicted of physical abuse in Anchorage. In 2001, he also was accused of abusing a young girl in Palmer.

On Dec. 7, troopers arrested Johnson at work.

"Lenard Johnson denied the allegations of sexual abuse and was subsequently arrested and remanded to the Palmer Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility and charged with 12 counts of sexual abuse of a minor in the first degree," Caldarea wrote.

According to court documents, on Dec. 19 his bail was set at $100,000 and he was ordered to find a third party to watch over him if he wants to be released from jail as he awaits trial.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.