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Pomerenke charged with child sex crimes

A man with a prison record is accused of hiding a teenaged Waupaca girl in the basement of his parents’ Scandinavia home for two weeks while having sex with her.

Investigators say the girl told them Michael W. Pomerenke, 35, began having sex with her when she was 12 years old.

Pomerenke is charged with two counts of sexual assault of a child, two counts of repeated sexual assault of the same child, three counts of sexual intercourse with a child, and one count each of sexual exploitation of a child, possession of child pornography and abduction of a child.

Shortly before noon on June 16, Waupaca County Sheriff’s Deputy Dave Huberty was dispatched to the Red Banks Motel in Fremont in response to a report that Pomerenke was there with a 16-year-old runaway girl.

Huberty was unable to locate Pomerenke or the girl. Then at 2 p.m., Huberty was dispatched to the motel again when it was reported that Pomerenke and the girl had returned.

The deputy found the girl inside a Jeep and her mother and several other adults standing near the vehicle.

While Huberty took the girl into protective custody, the adults pointed to a man standing outside one of the motel units and said, “There he is … He’s a pedophile.”

The girl initially told investigators that nothing was going on between her and Pomerenke, according to the criminal complaint.

On July 9, a Waupaca County social worker met with the girl at a shelter in Green Bay.

The girl said Pomerenke was her mother’s former co-worker and friend. She said she first started having contact with him in 2010, and they began having sex when she was 12 and Pomerenke was 32.

She estimated they had sex about 200 times over the period of three years, often at his parents’ home.

In May 2013, Pomerenke was convicted of his seventh drunken driving offense and sentenced to three years in state prison. He remained in contact with the girl while in prison.

Pomerenke was released by the Department of Corrections in February 2014 and placed on extended supervision. Between Feb. 11, 2013, and May 17, 2014, the two exchanged sexually explicit photos via their cellphones, according to the criminal complaint.

Pomerenke is also accused of giving the girl drugs and alcohol.

From May 27 to June 16, the girl was missing from home. During two weeks of that time, she was living in the basement of the home of Pomerenke’s parents, until Pomerenke’s son saw her, the complaint says.

The girl told police that he gave her a bucket to urinate in and she would climb through a hole in the basement wall to go to a gas station to use its bathroom, the complaint says.

Pomerenke is currently being held in custody on $50,000 cash bail.

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