A three-day trial is scheduled to begin Nov. 29 in Lincoln County circuit court for a 37-year-old Yachats man arrested in May after being indicted by a grand jury on 15 counts of encouraging child sex abuse.
Joshua L. Slauf has pleaded not guilty to the charges and is being held in the Lincoln County Jail with bail of $250,000. He was arrested May 20. Slauf has also lived in Toledo and Newport.
The indictment accuses Slauf of unlawfully and knowingly duplicating sexually explicit conduct involving a child 14 times between January 2022 and March of this year. A 15th charge involved knowingly possessing sexually explicit conduct by a child. All the charges are considered child abuse.
Slauf was originally scheduled for trial on July 13, but only received a court-appointed attorney eight days before that because of the lack of state funds to provide lawyers for indigent defendants. His attorney is now Kathryn Benfield.
The trial was re-scheduled for Sept. 6, then moved to late November at Benfield’s request.
On Aug. 17 presiding Judge Sheryl Bachart denied a request by Benefield and Slauf to disqualify her from hearing the case after she entered a not guilty plea for him on May 30 after Oregon Public Defense Services failed to provide him a lawyer.
