Kateland Gent, the 31-year-old woman arrested last June for molesting her stepsister when she was around 12, was sentenced this morning to two years in prison followed by 10 years on sex-offender probation and a lifetime designation as a sex offender.
The charge the State Attorney’s Office originally filed against Gent–lewd and lascivious molestation by an adult on a victim younger than 12–carried a penalty of up to life in prison. The State Attorney’s Office amended that filing, reducing the charge to a second-degree felony count punishable by a maximum of 15 years, placing the girl’s age above 12.
“This is a below guidelines resolution,” Circuit Judge Dawn Nichols said, referring to the state sentencing guidelines, which called for a harsher penalty.
Nichols imposed the sentence after Gent pleaded guilty during an appearance for a probation violation and the prosecution’s planned revocation of her bond after a second arrest in St. Lucie County for an unrelated offense. Assistant State Attorney Melissa Clark had filed the bond revocation motion due to the second arrest. It would have likely been granted.
Assistant Public Defender Courtney Davison made that moot with the plea agreement, which had the victim’s family’s endorsement. The child’s mother was attending the hearing by zoom.
“If you wouldn’t mind going a bit slowly this morning with Miss Gent,” Davidson asked the judge at the beginning of the brief hearing: Gent said she has mental health issues and, while she was on medication this morning, had not been so at the time of the incident. She did not make clear whether she was referring to the molestation or to the more recent arrest for domestic battery.
“And when I get out, I’m gonna make sure I take that medication,” Gent said. But she almost derailed the plea: “The reason why I did take this plea is because I was under the influence, and it’s two against one, and they would never believe me, and due to my record and history,” she told the judge. (The girl’s best friend had been with her at the time of the vibrator incident and spoke to a Child Protection Team interviewer, corroborating the account.)
Nichols told Gent that in that case she could not accept the plea. “Part of the sex offender treatment, which is part of probation,” the judge said, “is that you accept what you did and you acknowledge what you did. If you want to contest this and go to trial, we can do that. You always have the right to do that. But if you go into treatment and you tell them, I only entered this plea because I thought it was in my best interest, you’re going to fail out of the sex offender treatment, which will violate your probation, which will send you back to prison.”
“I understand,” Gent said.
Davidson, the assistant public defender, then had a talk with Gent, covering up the mic for privacy. Gent then addressed the judge: “I kind of said that wrong, your honor. I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m going to take the plea deal.” So she did.
The girl’s mother briefly addressed the court to say she agreed with the plea agreement, and to speak on behalf of her daughter. “I just hope that she does truly reflect back on this and does the work that needs to be done to take accountability and to truly know what she did, did affect my child,” the mother said. “It affected her not just mentally, her mental state in that situation, in that whole summer, but also her relationship with her father. She has not seen her father in four years. It, for my daughter, really has been traumatizing. I’m not even saying it from a place of being angry, but I truly do hope that she does reach within herself and see how her actions did affect other people. I just hope that she does the work that needs to be done.”
Gent was arrested in Flagler County last June 19 after the girl’s mother reported the incident to the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office. The incident dates back to the summer of 2021 in Palm Coast’s W-Section. The girl’s mother found out about it only by uncovering text messages on her daughter’s phone. Her daughter told her that she had not disclosed the incident because Gent had allegedly threatened to kill the girl’s mother if she told.
Based on the girl’s account of the incident to a Child Protection Team forensic interviewer, the girl was at her father’s house with her best friend, in Gent’s room. Gent had given both young girls alcohol. When the girl started talking about her ex-boyfriend, Gent “responded by calling her a dirty girl” then took the girl’s phone and directed her to pose on the bed with her back arched, according to court documents. Gent took a photograph of the girl posing that way and sent it to the ex.
The trio was then watching a movie in Gent’s room. The girl was sitting crosslegged, with Gent on one side and her best friend on the other, when Gent reached over her took a rose-shaped and rose-colored vibrator from a drawer. The girl described Gent “turning on the vibrator and putting it on her crotch and asking [the girl] if she liked it while laughing,” leaving it there–over the girl’s clothes–for 30 seconds before the girl pushed it away, backed up and moved off the bed. Gent then put the vibrator away. Gent also complimented the girl’s breasts.
Interviewed by sheriff’s detectives, Gent didn’t deny having used the vibrator, saying she was just demonstrating to the girls how it’s used. She was booked at the Flagler County jail last July 11. Gent’s motion for a bond reduction a few days later was denied. She posted bail on Aug. 25 and returned to Ft. Pierce, where she was living.
On May 10, she was rearrested there on a felony charge of battery for allegedly dragging another woman on the ground by the hair and punching her. Gent was drunk at the time, according to her arrest report. That case has yet to be disposed of, so the court today agreed to turn Gent over to the St. Lucie County jail before she is processed through the state prison system–assuming the prison system doesn’t claim her first: that’s neither in the court’s nor the Flagler County jail’s control.
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