Plea agreement signed in felony sex abuse of children case
Nehemias Valeriano Midence, 22, has signed a plea agreement in his sexual abuse of children felony case in district court.
He was charged last fall with three felony counts of sexual abuse of children.
He’s being held in the Cascade County Adult Detention Center on a $500,000 bond.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement placed a hold on Midence, which means he won’t be released even if he pays his bond, according to the Cascade County Attorney’s Office.
His change of plea hearing is scheduled for July 27. A sentencing hearing will be scheduled once the court accepts his plea.
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In the agreement, Midence agrees to plead guilty to one count of felony sexual abuse of children for the charge related to video of a local minor girl being found on Midence’s phone.
The maximum sentence for the charge is a fine of up to $10,000 or a 10-year prison term, or both.
Prosecutors worked with the victims to reach the agreement.
Under the agreement, Midence is required to complete a psychosexual evaluation with a court-appointed Montana Sex Offender Treatment Association-certified evaluator.
If the evaluator designates Midence as a Tier One offender, under Montana state law, the prosecution will recommend a 10-year commitment to the Montana Department of Corrections, with all time suspended.
If the evaluator designates Midence as a Tier Two or Tier Three offender, the prosecution may recommend any lawful sentence under state law.
In both instances, Midence will be required to comply with the evaluator’s treatment recommendations.
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He also forfeits all seized computers, cell phones and electronics that were seized in connection with the investigation that contain child sexual exploitation material.
In the agreement, the defense reserved the right to request a deferred imposition of sentence and argue for a lesser sentence than what the state recommends.
Earlier this year, Judge Elizabeth Best denied multiple requests by Midence’s defense attorney for bail reduction
In February, Midence’s defense asked to dismiss and suppress information obtained through a 2025 GFPD investigation into another woman’s allegation that he was stalking her.
In June 2025, a former Great Falls Municipal Court judge granted a search warrant for Midence’s devices on the belief he had committed stalking and obscenity.
Midence argued that probable cause for the obscenity charge didn’t exist.
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With the search warrant, GFPD continued to work with Homeland Security Investigations to “forensically extract data from the phone. Midence takes issue with GFPD providing ‘reference information’ which mentions another alleged victim…to perform the forensic examination, and providing no information concerning adult victim SM. Midence alleges that GFPD was looking for
‘whatever [it] could to deport him,'” Best wrote in her order denying the motion to suppress.
In a forensic search, HSI found eight images that suggested but were unclear if they were child sexual abuse material, but then came across a ninth image that was clearly such material, Best wrote.
At that point, investigators stopped their search and applied for another search warrant, which they received in August 2025. A few weeks later, a third victim came forward and Midence’s team argued that GFPD knew about the third victim before seeking warrants but didn’t mention her, according to court documents.
Midence’s team argued that the former judge was not neutral because one of the victims worked for GFPD. Best wrote that claim was not supported factually or legally and would not consider it.
In her order, Best found that the requirements for search warrants were met, and that once other offenses were found during the search of Midence’s devices, investigators stopped and obtained a warrant to continue.
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Midence also has two pending cases in Great Falls Municipal Court.
In April, he was arrested for violating bond conditions in his felony case.
Last fall, he was initially held on a $500,000 bond.
In October, Judge Elizabeth Best reduced his bail to $250,000, over the prosecution’s objections, and he subsequently bonded out of jail.
One of his conditions was that he remain law-abiding.
Midence was cited in Great Falls Municipal Court on April 7 with new counts of partner family member assault and unlawful detention involving a female he applied for a marriage license with earlier this year, according to court records.
In the new case, he was ordered not to have contact with the female and to have GPS monitoring before release from jail.
A jury trial is scheduled for July 30 in that case.
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According to the police affidavit in his most recent Municipal Court case, the victim’s mother called police with concerns about the victim’s welfare. The victim had texted that she needed her mom but then didn’t text or call for about 10 minutes. The mother told police that Midence sometimes takes the victim’s phone when her location is turned off.
Police responded to the victim’s apartment and heard screaming as they approached. A neighbor commented to officers that it was the second domestic between Midence and the victim within a week, according to court documents.
The victim, who was 12-weeks pregnant at the time, told officers that Midence was physically assaulting her and they’d been arguing about her not wanting to go to Billings with him, according to court documents.
She said Midence had punched the television in the bedroom and there were holes in doors and the wall that had been recently patched.
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The victim told officers that when she tried to text her mother back, Midence bit her arm and took her phone. She also had injuries to her side and arm, telling officers that he had grabbed her very hard. Officers observed redness and new bruising consistent with finger marks, according to the affidavit.
The victim told officers it was her fault for how Midence was acting, which officers noted, “is a typical response or feeling for a victim of domestic violence,” according to the affidavit.
Midence denied the physical altercation and when asked about the victim’s new injuries, he told officers she did it to herself.
In mid-September, a U.S. Homeland Security agent contacted the Great Falls Police Department after finding child sexual abuse material on Midence’s phone.
The federal agent was searching the phone for evidence in an unrelated stalking charge, for which he was charged in April 2025 in Municipal Court.
When the agent came across the image, he stopped and obtained a warrant to continue searching the device for other such images.
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A victim had also made a report to GFPD that Midence had physically and sexually assaulted her for years.
The federal agent told the GFPD detective that forensic analysis of Midence’s phone was ongoing, but in the initial scan, he’d located an image of a two- to four-year-old with an adult penis in its mouth and a 10- to 13-year-old Hispanic female undressing and masturbating in a pink/blue bedroom, according to charging documents.
The federal agent still had about 62,000 images to scan.
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The GFPD detective met with the victim in mid-September, who said she turned 18 in 2025 and met Midence in high school when he was a senior and she was a freshman. At the time, she was 14 and Midence was 18.
Midence moved into the victim’s house and had a relationship with the girl’s mother, according to court documents.
The victim told investigators that she first had sex with Midence when she was 14 and he was 18.
She said that Midence also abused her younger brother.
The victim said that Midence required her to constantly share her location and keep him on FaceTime and once broke his phone on her forehead, as well as hit her with coat hangers. She said that he’d shot her in the knee with a BB gun, held a pocketknife to her neck, threatened to cut off her hair and grabbed her by the neck.
The victim told investigators that she was scared to report the alleged abuse earlier and that she believed he was behaving similarly with other girls. She said that she’d attempted suicide in 2022 because Midence was sleeping with other girls, according to court documents.
She said that Midence took video of them having sex and would send the videos to her phone.
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She told investigators that three weeks prior, Midence had forced her to have sex with him at his house where she’d gone to tell him goodbye and not to contact her anymore, according to court documents.
The victim got a restraining order against Midence in September and blocked all communication.
During the interview, detectives showed the victim one of the images from his phone and she identified herself and then identified herself in 13 images having sex with Midence. She was between 15-17 in most of the images, according to court documents.
The count Midence is pleading guilty to involves those images, according to the plea agreement.
The victim also identified her mother in one of the images and another possible teenager in another photo.
The victim and another intimate partner had restraining orders against Midence for threatening both with harm when the felony case was filed in September 2025, according to court documents.
Midence is not a U.S. citizen and has a local criminal history, in which U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has placed and removed holds on him several times. He had a pending immigration case and was out on bond in that matter when the local felony charges were filed.
Midence was arrested in April 2025 on misdemeanor charges of stalking, resisting arrest and obstructing a peace officer.
When he was arrested, ICE put a hold on him, pending deportation action.
Midence made an initial appearance in Municipal Court on April 24, 2025.
By April 25, 2025 the ICE hold was lifted and he was held in the Cascade County Adult Detention Center on a $5,000 bond and required GPS monitoring before release, according to the County Attorney’s Office and the Cascade County Sheriff’s Office.
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Local officials told The Electric that ICE had informed them the hold was lifted since they didn’t have the capacity to pick Midence up at the time and that he had a deportation court date, bond and they knew his location.
On April 30, 2025, Midence bonded out of jail with GPS monitoring.
Midence’s country of origin is Honduras, according to multiple officials.
All of Midence’s local arrests have been due to complaints from local woman of his criminal behavior, not his immigration status, according to court records.
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“The focus of the Great Falls Police Department is enforcement of state and local law, first and foremost, and it is very uncommon for us to be asked to assist with any deportation efforts,” GFPD’s Lt. Matt Fleming told The Electric in 2025.
The Electric contacted ICE three times since April seeking information about his immigration history and pending federal cases, but has not yet received a response.
Midence’s stalking case is in Great Falls Municipal Court, a court of limited jurisdiction, and was dismissed without prejudice, pending further investigation, according to a motion filed in July 2025.
The case was reopened in April 2026 and a jury trial is currently scheduled for Aug. 25.
Judges in Municipal Court and District Court have no ability to enforce federal laws, including immigration laws.
Midence was placed on an ICE hold in 2022 that was also lifted, according to the Cascade County Attorney’s Office.
Midence was arrested in April 2025 on complaints related to his personal relationship with a local woman who told investigators that they were in a sexual relationship and he had threatened her, required her to share her phone location with him and called, texted or messaged repeatedly.
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During an April 23 interview with Great Falls police officers, the woman said that she’d known of Midence in high school but had gotten involved with him in February 2025 and they were in a sexual relationship, according to court documents.
In March 2025, he was arrested by ICE, had a deportation hearing in Nevada, bonded out and returned to Great Falls about a week later, when he restarted his relationship with the woman, according to police affidavits and local officials.
Soon after his return to Great Falls, Midence required the woman to have her cell phone location on at all times and if she didn’t, he’d call or text continually, according to the officer affidavit. In one instance, he called 18 times in a row, according to court documents.
He showed up at her school or apartment and was controlling. She told officers she was scared and didn’t know how to leave him.
She told her coaches and best friend about the situation and sought counseling due to his “constant harassment,” according to the officer affidavit.
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During her interview with GFPD, she said that Midence had told her the night before that if she left him, he’d kill her, according to the affidavit.
GFPD officers interviewed Midence in that case, during which he admitted that he liked to know where “his girl” is and that he could be controlling. He admitted to officers that his actions could cause the woman fear and that he had made a statement along the lines of if she left him, he’d kill her, during a sexual encounter, meant to “turn her on,” according to the affidavit.
Officers determined they were charging Midence with stalking and while going to arrest him at the group home he worked in at the time, they learned he had a history of resisting arrest from his March 2025 arrest by ICE, according to a police affidavit.
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When officers arrived at the residence, they saw Midence through an open window and advised him to come outside. He refused and asked why they needed to speak to him, according to the affidavit.
Midence called someone on the phone yelling “policia,” according to the affidavit.
A member of the U.S. Marshals task force broke through the window screen and grabbed onto Midence, at which point he pulled away, so a GFPD officer also reached in to grab him.
Officers told Midence he was under arrest, but he continued to resist, so an officer attempted to tase Midence, but it didn’t work and Midence broke free, fleeing out a back door, according to the affidavit.
Midence fled from GFPD officers and U.S. Marshals, who pursued and eventually arrested him, according to the affidavit.
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Midence has had contact with local law enforcement going back to 2019, according to the Cascade County Attorney’s Office, Cascade County Sheriff’s Office and Great Falls Police Department.
In 2019, he was cited as a minor in possession of tobacco.
In 2022, he was charged with a felony count of custodial interference and misdemeanor counts of failure to give notice of a crash and reckless driving involving death or serious bodily injury, according to court records. All of those charges were later dismissed.
There have been about 20 calls for service related to Midence since 2023, according to local law enforcement, including allegations or charges of kidnapping, custodial interference, theft, order of protection violation, trespass and a city cell phone violation. All of those incidents were initiated by local complaints.
