A pair of Lake County trials started Monday for child molesting and sexual misconduct with a minor.
Hakeem Pittman
A Chicago man is on trial for allegedly sexually abusing an underage teen girl in East Chicago.
Hakeem Pittman, 30, is facing three counts of Level 1 child molesting and one count of Level 5 felony sexual misconduct with a minor. He has pleaded not guilty.
Deputy Prosecutor Keith Anderson said Pittman groomed the girl, starting with a “Truth or Dare” game that grew sexual, asking her to perform sex acts. Later, he texted her to start having sex.
Over time, he told her to delete scores of texts over a dozen times, the prosecutor said. The victim later testified she kept a lot of them, later texting her mom screenshots to tell her what had been happening.
Defense lawyer Roseann Ivanovich argued the victim’s text disclosure to her mom was “delayed” and there was no DNA evidence.
“I wanted it to stop, so I had to do something,” the victim said during her testimony Monday, referring to how she told her mother.
According to the probable cause affidavit, the mother was crying, “hyperventilating” and yelling for cops on April 26, 2024, at the East Chicago police station.
Her daughter’s behavior had been off in recent months, she said. When the girl said she needed to tell her something, the woman suggested she could write it in texts. Pittman had been touching her “inappropriately,” the girl told her.
The texts Pittman sent the child appeared to imply he had sexual contact with her. The girl told police Pittman had molested her eight times over two years, starting as a preteen. He raped her two months earlier.
Michael Langford
A Portage man’s trial started Monday for molesting three boys, charges allege.
Michael Langford, 47, is facing three counts of sexual misconduct with a minor and two counts of child seduction. He has pleaded not guilty.
Deputy Prosecutor Shannon Phillips argued in opening statements that Langford gave the youngest victim money and gifts in exchange for sex acts.
Langford’s defense lawyer Herb Shaps declined to give an opening statement to jurors.
Court documents allege the youngest victim – who experienced the most sexual abuse – told relatives what happened on an August 2019 camping trip. Investigators wrote Langford molested the victims between March 2018 and July 2019.
He told police that he was sexually abused starting at age 5 or 6. He was molested at least “five hundred times,” including 50 times in Crown Point, court records allege.
mcolias@post-trib.com
