BILLINGS — A trial date has been set for a Billings man charged in a scheme to rape a woman who reported the same man sexually abused her when she was 8 years old.
The Billings Gazette reports the trial for 56-year-old Leslie Dean Ernst will begin on Nov. 29.
Another woman reported that Ernst raped her in 2004, when she was 17, and that he continued to contact her for years. Rape and stalking charges were filed in 2013.
Then another woman came forward and said Ernst used a fake name to befriend her on Facebook, got her to confide that she had been sexually abused as a child and then developed a complicated scheme for her to get back at her molester that ended with Ernst raping her. The woman said it was Ernst who sexually abused her as a child.