Nehemias Valeriano Midence, 22, was sentenced in district court to one felony count of sexual abuse of children for having a video of a local minor girl on his phone.
He was charged last fall with three felony counts of sexual abuse of children and over the summer he signed a plea agreement to plead guilty to one of those counts.
He’s been held in the Cascade County Adult Detention Center on a $500,000 bond.
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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement placed a hold on Midence, meaning he won’t be released now that he’s been sentenced, according to the Cascade County Attorney’s Office, as his case isn’t related to the federal class action immigration suit requiring the release of people wrongfully arrested or detained.
The maximum sentence for the charge is a fine of up to $10,000 or a 10-year prison term, or both.
Under the agreement, Midence was required to complete a psychosexual evaluation with a court-appointed Montana Sex Offender Treatment Association-certified evaluator.
The evaluator designated Midence as a Tier One offender, under Montana state law, and under the agreement, the prosecution recommended a 10-year commitment to the Montana Department of Corrections, with all time suspended.
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Midence received credit for 224 days of time served and he is required to follow the treatment recommendations from his presentence investigation and forfeit his devices seized during the investigation that contained images and/or videos of his victims to be destroyed.
Larsen said it’s not often a victim appears in court in these types of cases and of particular concern for the prosecution was that the images could make it online and haunt the victims years later.
The nature of these offenses is “extremely significant,” Larsen said.
Zachary Kitchen, Midence’s defense attorney, said his client took responsibility for the things he did in this case, but hadn’t understood the differences between the act of sexual intercourse and possession of images of such acts.
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“This is an obvious case of rehabilitation,” Kitchen said and that his client was too young to understand that recording someone during sexual acts was not appropriate.
He asked the court to consider a lesser sentence and noted that there’s an “extreme likelihood of deportation in this case.”
During his sentencing hearing, Midence told the judge that he was sorry for his actions and “I guarantee I will not be here again.”
Judge Elizabeth Best said she would follow the plea agreement, sentencing Midence to a 10-year Montana DOC commitment with all time suspended and requiring him to register as a Tier 1 sexual offender and complete sexual offender treatment.
His conditions prohibit him from having unsupervised contact with anyone under the age of 18.
She said state sentencing policy requires that judges balance punishment, rehabilitation and community safety and she said the lawyers did a good job recognizing those issues in the plea agreement.
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Best said noted federal “draconian immigration policy” and recognized that the sentence may impact Midence in a severe way concerning deportation, but she can’t consider that in sentencing.
Best said she recognized Midence’s age and that he was intelligent and educated and was “proud of you for what you’ve done in jail.”
She said sexual abuse of children, including possession of material, “causes significant permanent childhood trauma and “harm to victims is permanent.”
During the Oct. 19 sentencing hearing, his victim spoke about the impact on her life.
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, according to court documents.
She reported her interactions with Midence to the Great Falls Police Department in the fall of 2025.
The victim told investigators that she first had sex with Midence when she was 14 and he was 18.
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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 2025 and blocked all communication.
During the interview last year, 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.
The victim told the court during the Oct. 19 sentencing hearing that she’d been suffering from depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress for the last five years.
She said that it was hard to be in court, facing him and felt that it will have a lifelong impact.
She said she hopes Midence is not released so he doesn’t have the opportunity to do this to another person.
Best thanked the victim for being at the hearing.
“That was brave of you to tak to me,” she said.
Midence’s aunt, Sindy Neubauer, spoke on his behalf.
She said that as a young man he was very immature and had learned through this case of the mistakes he had made.
She said that, getting involved sexually with the victim and her mother, Midence didn’t understand what would happen.
Neubauer said that during this case, Midence “had a serious encounter with God” and she believed he’d come out of this situation and turn it into a positive.
“My heart breaks,” she said, and that it wasn’t an easy situation for anyone but asked the court to show Midence mercy.
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She said, “he’s not a danger,” and that he’d learned from his mistakes.
During his July 27 change of plea hearing, Kitchen, Midence’s defense attorney, said Midence understood he’d likely be deported as a result of his guilty plea.
Kitchen asked the judge to release Midence on his own recognizance until sentencing.
Larsen, the deputy county attorney prosecuting the case, objected over concerns that Midence has been accused of similar offenses against multiple victims, including one while he was out on bond in the felony case.
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Best maintained Midence’s bond and had denied multiple requests by Midence’s defense attorney for bail reduction earlier this year.
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’s attorney 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 had two cases in Great Falls Municipal Court that have since been dismissed, according to court records.
In April, he was arrested for violating bond conditions in his felony case, in which he was sentenced this week.
Last fall, he was initially held on a $500,000 bond.
In October 2025, 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 in April 2026 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. She’s since filed a petition to invalidate the marriage.
In the most recent case, he was ordered not to have contact with the female and to have GPS monitoring before release from jail.
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According to the police affidavit in the 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 incident 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 punched the television in the bedroom, and there were holes in doors and walls 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.
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The federal agent still had about 62,000 images to scan.
The GFPD detective met with the victim in his felony case, for which he was just sentenced, in mid-September 2025.
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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.
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 jail 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 last year 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 women 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 was 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 dismissed again in August.
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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 2025 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 more than 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.
