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Dezarae Manson, the youngest of the three Marion County defendants charged in the March rape of an 18-year-old woman, is facing a felony charge in Illinois for telling police there that she was sexually assaulted about eight years ago, according to McHenry County court records obtained by the Observer.
Manson, 20, is charged with disorderly conduct by false report of an offense, a Class 4 felony. The complaint says that at about 10:46 a.m. on July 14 she told Johnsburg police Officer Timothy Aubert that a sexual assault had been committed roughly eight years earlier, knowing there was no reasonable ground to believe it had happened. Johnsburg is a village in McHenry County, northwest of Chicago.
Manson would have been about 12 at the time of the assault she described. The person she accused is a male family member, and it was not Steven M. Manson Jr., her stepfather and co-defendant in Arkansas. The court file does not say what led police to conclude the report was false, and the Observer has requested the Johnsburg police report.
Daniel Harvey of the Johnsburg Police Department signed the complaint Aug. 3 with the approval of Assistant State’s Attorney Nick Sheppard. McHenry County Judge Jeffrey L. Hirsch signed an arrest warrant the same day and ordered the case sealed until Manson was taken into custody.
The warrant lists her address as 761 Marion County Road 8054 in Yellville, the Manson family property where the March assault is alleged to have happened. It authorized her arrest in Illinois and seven neighboring Midwestern states but not in Arkansas.
The warrant was served Aug. 22. Manson appeared from the McHenry County jail that morning before Judge Joel D. Berg, who appointed a public defender, unsealed the case and released her on her own recognizance.
Illinois ended cash bail in 2023 under the Pretrial Fairness Act. A Class 4 false report charge is not among the offenses for which prosecutors can ask a judge to hold a defendant before trial.
Prosecutors instead asked for conditions, and Berg granted them. Manson is barred from approaching or communicating with the relative she accused, is under the direct supervision of the Office of Statewide Pretrial Services, and must allow pretrial officers into her residence at any time to check her compliance.
Her release conditions also require her to appear at every court date, commit no new crimes and report any change of address to the clerk within 24 hours. A preliminary hearing set for Sept. 18 was continued at the prosecution’s request. It is now set for Oct. 20 at 9 a.m. before Judge Mark R. Gerhardt at the courthouse in Woodstock.
In a sworn affidavit filed the day of her arrest to obtain a public defender, Manson said she had been living in Johnsburg for about two months with an aunt and uncle who support her. She listed no bank account, no cash and no debts, and said she owned a 2015 Ford F-150 outright. She wrote that she had a job at a grocery store in nearby Antioch that was to start the following Monday.
A Class 4 felony in Illinois carries one to three years in prison, though a judge can also sentence a defendant to probation.
Manson has also asked an Illinois court to let her drop the Manson name and return to Kennedy, the name she was born with. In a hardship statement filed with a request to waive the court fees, she wrote that she left “a grooming situation in Arkansas from my step dad that started when I was 15,” came back to live with her family and was starting her life over. She listed $370 in monthly expenses, for her phone and dog food, and said friends and family had supported her since she arrived.
It is the first time she has described the alleged grooming in her own words in a court record. Court filings and sources have previously described her as Manson Jr.’s stepdaughter and girlfriend and as a grooming victim since age 15.
The request reverses a petition she filed in Marion County to take the Manson name. In that petition, filed as Dezarae Shae-Lynn Kennedy, she told the court she wanted her “new family’s” last name because her “old family” was stalking and harassing her and the Mansons over the internet.
The Illinois arrest came while Manson was free on bond in Marion County, where she is charged with rape, second-degree sexual assault and coercion. She was released March 14 on a $50,000 surety bond written by Bryce’s Bail Bonding of Higden, according to the bond filed in her case, which shows a $5,000 premium was paid before her release.
She, her stepfather Steven M. Manson Jr. and his father Steven L. Manson Sr. were charged after a woman told sheriff’s investigators she was raped at the County Road 8054 home on March 7. Manson Jr. and Manson Sr. are both in the Marion County jail.
The July 14 police report came one day after Manson Jr.’s rape trial in a separate case, involving his 10-year-old stepdaughter, failed to go forward on July 13. One week later, Dezarae Manson signed a sworn affidavit of indigency in Baxter County stating that the Manson family had been paying for her attorney and that she had no money now that she had left. Eugene Clifford, who had represented all three defendants, withdrew from every Manson case three days after that, citing a conflict of interest.
Manson is now represented in Marion County by the public defender’s office. Her Marion County docket shows no upcoming court date.
Her Marion County docket also contains no order setting conditions of release, and the bond itself requires only that she appear in court. Nothing in the Arkansas record bars her from living in Illinois.
Arkansas court rules allow prosecutors to ask a judge to revoke a defendant’s pretrial release when the defendant is charged with a new felony while awaiting trial. The 14th Judicial District prosecutor’s office used that rule against Manson Sr. in August, filing to revoke his bond six days after his July 30 arrest on drug and firearm charges. No motion to revoke Dezarae Manson’s bond appears on her docket.
The Illinois charge could also surface in the cases against Manson Jr. and Manson Sr. Their attorney, Jack Lofton, filed a discovery motion in August demanding any information the state holds that could be used to challenge the credibility of its witnesses. A pending charge of making a false report to police is the kind of record defense attorneys routinely use to attack a witness.
McHenry County is familiar ground for the Manson family. Manson Jr.’s earlier conviction for aggravated criminal sexual abuse of a 13-year-old came out of the same courthouse.
Manson Sr. is due back in Marion County Circuit Court for a status hearing Oct. 13. Manson Jr. has a status hearing Nov. 10 and a jury trial set for Feb. 10, 2027.
