ALTUS — A former Altus doctor who allegedly molested a young Jackson County girl in 1997 is in the Jackson County Jail charged with three counts of lewd molestation and one count of lewd exhibition of person.
Michael J. Butt, 50, of 328 Point Bluff Drive in Decatur, Ill., was arrested Dec. 7 in Decatur by the Macon County Sheriff’s Department and brought to Altus on Tuesday. He was booked into the Jackson County Jail at 6:27 p.m. and appeared Wednesday at an initial hearing. His bail is set at $100,000.
In January 1997, Butt was charged with sexual battery on a 17-year-old female patient whom he was accused of touching without her consent in November 1996. In August 1998 he pleaded no contest to the charge and his state medical license was suspended for two years. He was given a suspended two-year sentence and ordered to pay $5,160 in fine and costs.
A month after his arrest for sexual battery, Butt’s wife, Karol Butt, was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head in the couple’s home. The medical examiner confirmed that the gun was inside the victim’s mouth when the trigger was pulled.
Butt, who was free on a $10,000 bond, and the couple’s three children were at home at the time of the shooting. No signs of burglary or robbery were found, neither was a suicide note ever recovered. Butt was never charged with the crime.
The molestation charges Butt now faces, according to an affidavit filed in District Court, stem from at least three incidents in 1997 when Butt allegedly fondled a 7- or 8-year-old girl who was a friend of Butt’s daughter at the time.
According to the affidavit, the girl in June of this year told a police detective that while she and Butt’s daughter were upstairs playing at the Butts’ home, he would come into the room and ask her to go into the living room and sit on the couch, where he allegedly fondled the girl while sexually gratifying himself.
On one occasion, the girl said, Butt exposed himself to her while he was using the restroom.
Butt is to appear at a preliminary hearing in the case Jan. 9.
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