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The rape trial of Steven M. Manson Jr. opens today in Marion County, but the public will not be able to follow it through the court’s own records. The docket in case 45CR-25-118 was closed to the public and removed from ARCourts, the state’s official online court records system, in the days before trial. The filings can still be viewed through paid services but cannot be downloaded, and no new entries have appeared.
Manson Jr., 35, of Yellville, is charged with rape, a Class Y felony, and sexual assault in the second degree, a Class B felony. The state filed the charges with a habitual offender enhancement.
Court records allege the offense took place Nov. 20, 2025, and that the victim was his 10-year-old stepdaughter. The case began after Manson Jr.’s wife told a Marion County sheriff’s investigator that he had admitted to sexual contact with the child during an argument, according to the charging information. The child’s mother then questioned her about the allegations.
Manson Jr. is a registered Level II sex offender. He was convicted in Illinois of aggravated criminal sexual abuse involving a victim between the ages of 13 and 16 and served a prison term there, court records show.
The Observer’s reporting started as an accountability project on how the region’s courts kept releasing a registered sex offender as the charges against him grew. Over the fall and winter, Manson Jr. bonded out of custody more than once. A bail company wrote a $350,000 bond in December, and he left jail wearing an ankle monitor.
While he was out on bond in the child rape case, Manson Jr. was arrested again. In March, he was charged along with his father, Steven L. Manson, 56, and Dezarae Kennedy, 19, in connection with the rape of an 18-year-old woman at the family’s home. Kennedy is also Manson Jr.’s stepdaughter and is in a relationship with him.
That case has not gone to trial.
That reporting led the paper to Manson Jr.’s road and to the people who live along it. What neighbors described, and what the Observer saw for itself, went well beyond the court file.
The Manson home sits on Marion County Road 8054. On the day the Observer visited, several hundred chickens covered the property and spilled into the road, and dogs were chained around the edges of the land. Dead animals had been placed on stakes and structures around the yard, which the Observer photographed.
Debris and animal waste covered the ground, and the smell carried down the road. The scene matched a record already in the courts.
On May 31, 2025, a Springfield, Missouri, officer found Manson Jr. with about 130 animals in stacked cages on a trailer in 78-degree heat, according to a probable cause statement in Greene County, Missouri. Two chickens were dead, and he was charged with six counts of animal abuse and neglect. He failed to appear.
The people who live near the property are retirees, parents, farmers and grandparents, and several have lived on the road for decades. The Observer is not naming them because they fear retaliation, and it is using pseudonyms where it quotes them.
They describe an 18-month stretch of stolen dogs, roaming pigs, killed rabbits and chickens, torn-down fencing, late-night fires and threats against anyone who spoke up. One neighbor the Observer is calling Sarah said the family’s children came onto her land and killed her animals.
“The sheriff came out. They didn’t even write a report,” Sarah said.
Across interviews, neighbors gave a common account of the Marion County Sheriff’s Office. They said calls for help often produced no report, no charge and no relief.
Neighbors said deputies told them to handle trespassing animals themselves and waved off video they tried to hand over. One neighbor who kept complaining was arrested.
An Illinois resident who knew the family had warned the sheriff’s office about Manson Jr.’s conduct with a young relative before the child rape charge was filed, the Observer has reported.
Sheriff Gregg Alexander responded to the Observer’s coverage with a public statement. He said he was saddened by the reporting, praised his deputies and noted the cases had produced about $875,000 in bonds. He did not address what his office did with the warnings, or why a neighbor was charged instead of the family.
The Observer placed the Manson case alongside other Arkansas cases in which it found children failed by the agencies meant to protect them. That included the Jaclyn Barnett and Daniel Wright abuse case in Baxter County, where the Department of Human Services drew heavy criticism.
After that case, DHS searched its records and identified 341 cases statewide with a similar profile, in which repeated calls to the state’s child abuse hotline over time produced no move to remove the child. The Observer later obtained a copy of the state’s review of such cases.
The coverage landed during a fight at the state Capitol over DHS accountability. The Senate passed a bill tied to child-maltreatment oversight, Senate Bill 326, by a vote of 30-3 in March. The House then rejected it.
Sen. Scott Flippo of Bull Shoals voted for the bill. Rep. Stetson Painter of Mountain Home voted against it, even as he positioned himself as a leader on a planned DHS overhaul. Painter has said a broader rewrite would wait until lawmakers finished budget work.
The case before the jury is narrower than the story around it. In May, Circuit Judge Andrew S. Bailey ruled that the rape case could not be tried together with a separate kidnapping and firearms case. That means jurors will not hear evidence about alleged threats to keep household members from leaving or reporting.
Defense attorney Eugene Clifford of Little Rock has asked the court to move the trial out of Marion County and to keep a forensic interviewer from repeating the child’s account to jurors. Deputy Prosecuting Attorney John Russo is handling the case for Prosecuting Attorney David Ethredge’s office.
On July 8, a judge ordered a Harrison women’s shelter to release witness contact information to both sides and placed it under seal.
If a jury convicts Manson Jr. of rape as a habitual offender, the only sentence available under Arkansas law is life in prison without parole, according to the state’s filings.
Much remains unresolved as jury selection nears. The court has not publicly ruled on the request to move the trial, and it is unclear whether jurors will hear from a new witness prosecutors recently asked to bring forward. With the case off the state’s public docket, those answers may not surface before the trial itself.
