Sex offender gets 15 years

Frustrated by what he considered a lenient sentence recommended by attorneys, a Waynesboro judge Wednesday sent a sex offender to prison for 15 years for molesting two girls.

“Have you looked at his prior record?” Judge Humes J. Franklin asked Thomas Weidner, assistant commonwealth’s attorney. “I’ve got to take into account public safety.”

Franklin told attorneys he would have sentenced Tom Haney Vance II to 25 years in prison if not for their recommendation.

“I’m going to leave notes in the file,” Franklin said to Vance, “that the next judge max you out ... You’re a danger to society. An absolute danger to society.”

Vance, a convicted sex offender who has repeatedly ignored state sex offender registry laws, engaged the 10-year-old victims in various games to molest them on numerous occasions at an Arch Avenue home where he stayed, authorities said.

Vance touched the girls in the home and on a trampoline and grinded against them during a “wrestling game,” Weidner said at a prior plea hearing.

The most recent molestations came to the attention of a social services worker in October, Weidner said, resulting in a confession by Vance and two charges of aggravated sexual battery of a minor younger than age 13. Vance admitted to the touching but said he “gets mad at himself” afterward, Weidner said.

Weidner told the judge that the agreement took into account Vance’s honesty with police and his agreement to forgo a jury trial that would have put the victims on the witness stand.

Franklin sentenced Vance to 13 years and 11 months in prison, the midpoint recommended by state sentencing guidelines. He then added another one year and six months for a probation violation conviction.

Vance’s presence at the Arch Avenue home with the girls violated his probation and led to the molestations, Weidner said.

Vance was convicted in 1995 in Tazewell Circuit Court, west of Roanoke, of forcible sodomy, according to the Virginia State Police sex offender registry. Records show he has twice failed to register as a violent sex offender, in Orange County and in Waynesboro in April.