MONROE — A Gratiot man initially charged in 2016 for sexual assault of a child younger than 13 entered a plea deal with amended charges on July 13 and was sentenced to four months in jail and five years on probation.

Derek James Malone, 31, was scheduled to take the case to trial but instead pleaded guilty in Lafayette County Circuit Court to felony charges of causing mental harm to a child and exposing genitals of a child. As part of a plea agreement, 10 counts of possessing child pornography were dismissed.

Malone is ordered to begin the jail sentence July 27 and may serve his time in the Green County Jail, according to court records. Conditions of his probation include no contact with anyone younger than 18 and no access to any pornographic materials, not limited to child pornography.

He’s also ordered to complete a sex offender evaluation with the Department of Corrections.

Malone was initially charged in December 2016 with first-degree child sexual assault involving sexual contact with a child younger than 13. These charges were later amended. The child porn charges were not included in the original complaint, but added later.

At a preliminary hearing in January 2017, Lafayette County Sheriff’s Detective Matt Edge testified that his investigation of the case began in 2016 but was based around an incident from 2012.

Edge said police were contacted in 2016 with a flash drive containing images of child pornography found in Malone’s possession. In several of the images, Malone’s hand — identifiable by a distinctive scar and ring — could be seen exposing and groping the genitals of a sleeping child.

The face of the child could not be seen, so an identity could not be proven.

Other files on the flash drive included pornographic images of prepubescent and pubescent girls and women, including an unconscious woman being sexually assaulted. The woman reported that she was unaware such photos were ever taken.

The drive was broken and missing after being discovered in 2012. The drive resurfaced in 2016. It was broken in a way that prevented it from interfacing with a computer but did not obliterate the data within, which was retrieved by Department of Justice forensic investigators, Edge said.

State court records show no prior criminal convictions for Malone in Wisconsin.