Overview
- Judge J. R. Schrand accepted Michael Howard’s guilty plea and imposed a 15-year prison sentence.
- WCPO reports Howard pleaded to 28 counts of first-degree sexual abuse and one count of third-degree sodomy.
- Parole eligibility comes only after serving 85% of the sentence under Kentucky law, and he must register as a sex offender for life.
- The victim, now 20-year-old Timmy Goodman, addressed the court, describing years of grooming and rejecting Howard’s claim of a “relationship.”
- Goodman’s family said Howard leveraged his roles at Florence Baptist Temple and as an employer to access their son; investigators say the teen began working for Howard in 2019, sexually explicit texts followed in spring 2020, and a December 2024 report led to a 2025 arrest, with the case surfacing after Howard’s DUI.