Wheatland Man Gets Probation For Molesting 8-Year-Old Boy 40 Years Ago

A Wheatland man was sentenced Monday to three years of supervised probation during which he can’t have contact with minors without probation agent approval, and was ordered to pay $14,810 in restitution for molesting an 8-year-old boy more than 40 years ago when the man was 14.

Tyler Boyd, 54, appeared Monday for a sentencing hearing in Platte County District Court wearing a button-up blue shirt and standing next to his attorney, Frank Jones.

If he does not violate his probation, the conviction will not ultimately be entered into his record under a deferral provision.

Boyd and the victim, who asked Cowboy State Daily to refer to him by his initials TG, gave vastly different accounts of what happened in 1983-1984 while the pair were living near one another.

“There was an incident where I became friends with this kid and we played — and played house,” Boyd recalled when he addressed District Court Judge Edward Buchanan during the hearing. “So we had a couple incidents where we did that, and where things went too far.”

Boyd said he’d been molested by two men prior to these incidents.

TG’s description, conversely, was graphic and harrowing.

“I was raped 15-plus times. This was not a one-time deal. This was a period over a long time,” said TG, who went on to describe full-penetration, forcible rape in anatomical terms. “It wasn’t two boys messing around. It was one young man almost fully developed and an 8-year-old boy.

“And long after everybody walks away and forgets this, I’ll still get to battle this,” he continued. “My very first sexual experience, and probably my first 15-plus, were face-down, with my face in a woodpile — splinters in my cheeks.”

Boyd pleaded guilty to third-degree sexual assault in an earlier hearing, court documents say.

As part of his plea agreement, he’ll also have to complete psychosexual treatment at his own cost and stay away from minors during probation.

The $14,810 in restitution is to reimburse TG for therapy costs from the past two-and-a-half years, and a roughly $12,000 service dog.

TG told the court that the dog is a certified service dog named Star that helps with “crowd control” since he’s anxious when men approach him from behind. Star is trained to stop self-harm behaviors and knows to hold TG down with her body weight during his anxiety attacks.

TG told the court that he’s harmed himself physically throughout his life. He related a cathartic experience from inflicting physical pain, seeing it literally, and healing from it.

“You can’t ever seem to heal it, so you cause pain on the outside,” he said.  

Ex-Wife

Jones indicated that Boyd’s third wife, who has divorced him, played a pivotal role in getting TG to go to the sheriff’s office.

Boyd echoed that.

He said he and his wife were having marital issues before TG approached him in summer 2023. They’d been living apart. He was getting weary and wanted to finish their pending divorce and date other people, he told the court.

At some point TG reached out to the wife, trying to contact Boyd.

The wife urged Boyd to contact TG and resolve their past issues, and Boyd did — in a text message exchange that has since been part of the court record, and in which Boyd apologized.

Later that year, Boyd told his wife to go ahead with her already-filed divorce, he said.

“I told her I was done,” Boyd said. “I can’t do this anymore.”

Boyd told the court that in response, his wife said, “OK, I’m going to contact (TG) … and talk him into pressing charges against you.”

In a Tuesday interview with Cowboy State Daily, TG said Boyd’s wife did not urge him to report the man. It was his own progression of thoughts after confronting Boyd that led him to that, he said.

Boyd’s ex-wife in a Monday-evening email said that, “I had nothing to do with (TG) pressing charges against Tyler. To my knowledge Tyler had moved on and started dating before any of this had happened.”

Unusual Case

The case is unusual, special prosecutor Kelly Owen told the court.

Had Boyd been reported right away and charged in juvenile court at the age of 14, the court would have focused on rehabilitation, and it would only have had jurisdiction over him until the age of 21 in a case that wouldn’t go public.

Owen said in granting the plea agreement for probation and deferral, she tried the best she could to mirror that kind of arrangement.

Jones argued for Buchanan to remove a provision of the probation term forbidding contact with minors without probation agent approval, calling it “boilerplate language” more fitting for typical sex cases and not fitting for Boyd, who has gone on to lead a successful and productive life.

Boyd mentors youth in rodeo roping and other ranch-related activities, Jones said.

Boyd’s two sisters both told the court that he’s been around their children their entire lives, and he’s taken them horseback riding and on other adventures — and they’ve never had concerns about him being inappropriate with them.

Buchanan kept the no-contact provision in the probation agreement, however, after TG’s graphic victim testimony. TG had urged the court not to whittle down what he saw as an already-whittled plea agreement.

Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.