Gainesville man to be arraigned on child molestation charges


Michael McCullough

Michael W. McCullough, 57, of Gainesville, is being held in the Ozark County Jail on a $20,000 cash-only bond, accused of child molestation involving a girl who was younger than 12 when the molestation began.

McCullough is scheduled to be arraigned at 9 a.m. Tuesday, Jan. 9, before Associate Circuit Judge Cynthia MacPherson on one class A felony charge, one class B felony charge and one class C felony charge, all involving accusations of child molestation.

In the probable cause statement, Ozark County Sheriff’s Deputy Curtis Dobbs wrote that on Nov. 27 he was contacted by a woman who said her 12-year-old daughter had told her that McCullough “had been sexually touching her for the past three years.”

Later, during a Dec. 15 interview with a representative from the Child Advocacy Center in West Plains, the girl described incidents of alleged sexual touching and actions by McCullough that had occurred at Hootin an Hollarin three years earlier, when she was 9, and also at a Wasola residence when she was 11 and again on approximately Nov. 19 of this year when McCullough was at her residence.

The girl used “anatomically correct dolls” to demonstrate McCullough’s alleged actions and told the interviewer that such incidents “had happened on several occasions over the past 3 year[s],” according to the probable cause statement.

Dobbs also said in the statement that he asked McCullough to come to the sheriff’s office Dec. 22 to speak to him. After being advised of his Miranda rights, McCullough reportedly admitted to acting in ways the girl had described but said he was “just ‘goofing around,’” the statement says.  

Dobbs wrote that he believed McCullough “poses a danger to the victims and witnesses to these offenses and may attempt to intimidate the victim and her mother.”

A warrant was later issued, and McCullough was taken into custody on Dec. 28. 

Ozark County Times

504 Third Steet
PO Box 188
Gainesville, MO 65655

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