A man is now serving more than a year in jail after multiple women and children reported he had exposed himself to them in parking lots, neighborhoods and a store.
Justin M. Wagers, 35, Martinsville, was given a two-year sentence after pleading guilty to three felonies — two counts of public indecency with a prior conviction and one count of performing sexual conduct in front of a minor — in Johnson and Marion counties.
Beginning in June 2015, local police departments started getting calls about a man who had exposed himself to women and children. The man had knocked on women’s doors, sat on their porches and pulled up to them on the street, and when they looked at him he exposed himself. One report involved a 14-year-old girl, and another was from a woman who was with her children.
At least two of the women were able to identify Wagers, who had multiple past convictions and is listed as a sex offender, as the man who exposed himself to them.
Wagers was arrested in August after police used surveillance video at a Center Grove area gas station where a woman said he had followed her when she aired up her bicycle tires. The woman was able to identify Wagers as the man who then drove into a neighborhood, got out of his truck and exposed himself to her.
That same week, employees of a Goodwill store off State Road 135 on the southside reported a man had been in the store and exposed himself to a woman and a child while they were shopping, according to the police report.
Employees had seen Wagers’ photo after his arrest in Johnson County, and believed he was the man who exposed himself, the report said.
The customer was able to identify Wagers in a photo lineup, the report said.
Wagers was charged in both counties, pleaded guilty to three felonies and was sentenced to two years total, according to court records.
That was the maximum sentence Wagers could get for the felony charges, Johnson County Prosecutor Brad Cooper said.
Under the law, Wagers could only be charged with the lowest level felony, and that was only because he had prior convictions, Cooper said. Otherwise, a public indecency charge is typically a misdemeanor, he said.
Wagers has spent about five years in prison in the past decade and has convictions that stretch back to 2001 on charges of vicarious sexual gratification, public indecency and intimidation, and is listed on the sex offender registration in Morgan County for two counts of vicarious sexual gratification.
