Staff photo / Ed Runyan Leonard L. Sykes, 51, right, is on trial in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court on three counts of rape that would each result in a life prison sentence if he is convicted. At left is his attorney, Nick Brevetta.

YOUNGSTOWN — Leonard L. Sykes, 51, went on trial Tuesday on three counts of rape that could result in a life prison sentence if convicted. Sykes agreed to have his case heard by Judge Anthony Donofrio of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court without a jury.

Caitlyn Andrews, county assistant prosecutor, told Donofrio in opening statements that on Sept. 6, 2022, the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office was notified that a 12-year-old girl was missing after having lived previously with her father.

The U.S. Marshal’s Service was able to find the girl at an apartment on Park Avenue on Youngstown’s North Side, though they did not know who lived there. When they got there, they found the girl in underwear and a t-shirt walking into the bedroom of Sykes, who was wearing only underwear.

When a sheriff’s investigator and a member of the U.S. Marshal’s Service spoke to the girl, “she informed them she had been engaging in sex acts with the defendant, who was 49 years old at the time,” Andrews said.

The judge will see text messages that the girl and Sykes exchanged in which Sykes talked about sexual things he wanted to do to her and sent images of his body and had her send him images, Andrews said.

When the girl later spoke to officials at the Child Advocacy Center at Akron Children’s Mahoning Valley in Boardman, “she disclosed the exact same thing,” Andrews said. The girl stayed with Sykes “because she truly didn’t have anyplace else to go,” Andrews said.

Andrews admitted that the girl has “changed her tune a little bit” over the last two years as to the facts of the case, but “The State believes that the evidence will show that (Sykes) did commit” three counts of rape, one count of importuning and one count of disseminating matter harmful to juveniles, Andrews said.

Nick Brevetta, Sykes’ attorney, said that on Sept. 6, 2022, law enforcement went to Sykes’ mother’s home, where Sykes was staying. Brevetta said “The only evidence that anything took place between (the girl) and my client all stems from (the girl’s) words.”

As for the phone images, “the only identification of it being his phone is through” the girl, Brevetta said. As for sexual conduct, “It depends on when you ask” the girl, Brevetta said. “My client has been adamant — and you will hear him testify — that he never had sex with her.”

Brevetta said the “primary” reason people change their stories is “because they are being deceitful and dishonest. There is no forensics to link any sexual conduct to my client. There are no witnesses to any sexual behavior between the victim and my client — independent of” the alleged victim, Brevetta said.

“They are basing their whole case on a 13-year-old who has lied to them multiple times,” Brevetta said.

Two law enforcement officers were the first witnesses in the trial. The first was Thomas Barone, a Mahoning County Sheriff’s detective assigned to Mahoning County Children’s Services. The second was Bill Boldin, a deputy U.S. Marshal for the Northern District of Ohio, who now works at the headquarters in Washington, D.C., as national program coordinator for the Missing Child Unit, he said.

The trial resumes today.