BEATRICE – A 28-year-old Beatrice man has been ordered to serve up to 76 years in state prison, for the August 2024 abuse death of a four-month-old boy and the sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl.

Austin Meyn (mine) was sentenced in Gage County District Court Wednesday….with consecutive terms for manslaughter, two counts of intentional child abuse and first-degree sexual assault.

District Judge Rick Schreiner said Meyn received a significant benefit through a plea agreement and the judge said the defendant likely would have been convicted by a jury of the original charges filed in the case.

"There doesn't really, to me seem to be a credible sense of remorse in your letter to the court. You ask me to treat you as a victim in this because you believed that you were a father. That is fantasy. You are not a victim. You are not this child's father."

Chief Deputy Gage County Attorney Amanda Spracklen-Hogan read the text of a victim statement, submitted by the biological father of the four-month-old boy who died from blunt force injuries, whom Meyn was babysitting while the boy’s mother was at work.

"It is because Austin Meyn has repeatedly harmed children of our community...because he has sexually assaulted a child of our community...because he has intentionally abused children of our community...and has taken the life of a child in our community...and because he has acted callously and without remorse since he was last incarcerated for taking advantage and selling drugs to children in our community....and especially, where the safety and livelihood of our children, our most vulnerable are at stake.....justice demands that he face the maximum consequences for his crimes."

Defense Attorney Tim Noerrlinger urged the judge to consider sentences comparable with similar past cases and referred to the reduced charge regarding the death of the child.

"I would point out that this plea on the manslaughter, is a negligent or unlawful act. There are certainly a number of unlawful acts that appear to have occurred. I don't have any further comment but I'd ask the court to take that into account when parsing through the facts....especially considering that my client's return to the home is right around, if not right after the time when the fatal injury could have occurred."

Judge Schreiner cited two past cases, but said unlike Meyn, those defendants had little or no criminal history.

"You made it difficult in reading the reports in the best light, for this four-month old child to breath because that child was bothering you. You manipulated and sexually assaulted your babysitter and engaged her in deviant behavior for you own desires and satisfaction. You think of no one, but yourself."

The sentences issued Wednesday included a 19-to-20-year term for manslaughter, 3-years each for the two child abuse counts….and 49-to-50 years for the sexual assault.

Meyn received credit off his sentences for 376 days spent in jail. He’ll be required to register as a convicted sex offender, for a 25-year-period.