Wichita man made kidnapped girl have sex, hide in closet for a month. He’s guilty
A Sedgwick County jury has convicted a 37-year-old Wichita man of 18 crimes for kidnapping and sexually abusing an underage Arkansas girl who he forced to stay in his bedroom for more than a month while her family looked for her.
Wichita police found the girl on Dec. 14, 2022, in David Roark’s closet, where he made the teen stay when he wasn’t home so no one would see her. The girl told police she met Roark on a gaming application called IMVU and that he began messaging her about her character in the game before asking for her phone number.
He lied about his age, telling the girl he was 17, and said he “wanted to start dating,” according to a probable cause affidavit released in the case. When their contact progressed to video chats, Roark always kept his screen blank. He asked the girl to engage in sexual behavior and send him explicit photographs of herself.
In time, he “became controlling and would get angry if she was not on her phone to contact him,” the affidavit says.
Eventually, Roark concocted a plan to pick the girl up from her Arkansas home and bring her to Wichita because he “wanted her to live with him forever,” according to the affidavit.
It wasn’t until she got into the car with him on Nov. 12, 2022, that she realized he wasn’t a 17-year-old boy, the affidavit says. Roark was about twice that age at the time.
When they got back to Roark’s home, in the 1800 block of North Litchfield, she wasn’t allowed to leave, had to stay in his closet with only a little food and a cup or bucket to urinate in, and was rarely allowed to shower. She also was forced to have unprotected sex up to three times a day because Roark “was trying to get her pregnant” so they could “be a family,” the affidavit says. He bought her prenatal gummy vitamins and filmed some of the sexual encounters.
The girl told police when Roark was angry, he “would scream at her and withhold food” while eating in front of her. Once, he “screamed at her, grabbed her by the shoulders, and threw her on the bed” and she was fearful he “was going to hit her or slap her,” the affidavit says.
She told police she was too scared to use a phone Roark gave her to contact anyone for help.
Law enforcement used a variety of means to track down the girl and her captor, including IP addresses, surveillance video from businesses and credit card transactions.
By the time Wichita police found the girl crouched under a blanket in a closet reeking of urine, she’d been missing and at Roark’s home for more than a month. She was later reunited with her family, who had been searching for her, authorities have said.
Prosecutors charged Roark with one count of kidnapping, one count of child abuse, two counts of criminal sodomy, five counts of aggravated indecent liberties with a child and nine counts of sexual exploitation of a child. Jurors found him guilty on all counts after deliberating for less than three hours Monday, Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office spokesman Dan Dillon said. His trial started Sept. 23.
Roark pleaded not guilty to the charges in July.
During the trial last week, prosecutors said this wasn’t the first time Roark had sexual contact with an underage girl. In 2018, when he was around 30, he coerced a 15-year-old Kentucky girl he met over social media into having sex in exchange for marijuana, according to testimony that jurors weren’t allowed to hear. A Kentucky police sergeant and a forensic biologist testified that Roark’s DNA was found on the girl and that the investigation was presented for charges.
But the girl and her father declined to come to Kansas to testify in person about the incident and Roark’s defense lawyer objected to third-person retelling of the girl’s account by a sexual assault nurse, so jurors didn’t hear many details from the Kentucky case.
Roark did not take the witness stand and his lawyer did not present any evidence to the jury.
He is scheduled for sentencing Nov. 18. Some of his convictions carry a presumptive sentence of life in prison. The others carry presumptive sentences of 55 to 247 months or 31 to 136 months.
Sedgwick County District Judge Jeff Syrios presided over the trial.
This story was originally published September 30, 2024 at 6:10 PM.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misstated David Roark’s age.
