by ANDY SEVILLA

KYLE — A San Marcos man, already facing three charges of sexually assaulting a 12-year-old Kyle girl he met on a social networking site, is back in jail accused of having sex with a second minor.

Michael Casey Batton, 20, was initially arrested June 26 and charged with three counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child after police investigated a girl’s claim that she had sexual contact with Batton during three separate encounters in last December.

On Thursday, Batton was arrested a second time and charged with a fourth count of aggravated sexual assault of a child after a Hays County woman saw news reports of his initial arrest “which empowered her 17-year-old daughter to come forward and file a complaint” that she and Batton had sex when she was too young to legally consent, Hays County Sheriff’s Lt. Jeri Skrocki said this afternoon in a statement released to media.

“The sheriff’s office credits the media for the coverage in this case” with prompting the second alleged victim’s report to investigators, Skrocki said.

The second girl was 16 years old — too young under the law to give consent — at the time she and Batton allegedly had sexual contact, Skrocki said. The lieutenant did not say where in Hays County the second victim resides and court records were not immediately available late Friday afternoon when news of the second arrest was released to media.

ratton is being held at the Hays County jail on $150,000 bail, jail records state. He was released after his first arrest last month when he posted bail on a $75,000 bond.

In the case of the first victim, the girl told investigators she first met Batton on the social networking site Meetme.com in 2013. The child said she and Batton communicated on the website and by phone after exchanging numbers, though the two did not meet in person until December, according to an affidavit used to secure an arrest warrant from Pct. 2 Justice of the Peace Beth Smith.

The social site Meetme is similar to Facebook or MySpace but also provides users with a list of people who are online and uses GPS to identify who is nearby and how far away they are. According to the Meetme website, a user must be at least 13 years old and a freshman in high school to use the service.

The child told investigators she sneaked out of her Kyle home sometime before Christmas after everyone in the residence was asleep and met Batton at a nearby gas station.

The child said she and Batton went to a park near Wallace Middle School before driving to Walgreens at the intersection of FM 2770 and FM 150, court documents state. In the drugstore parking lot, the two talked for a while before moving to back seat of his car, court documents state. The child told investigators Batton “got on top of her and she just kind of stayed there and didn’t know what to do,” court documents state. The two engaged in sexual activity but the child told investigators that Batton stopped when she told him she needed to return home.

The girl and ratton engaged in sexual activity on two other occasions, she told investigators, once just after Christmas and again on New Year’s Eve. According to the child, Batton told her he was moving to North Dakota to help care for his mother.

Authorities first learned of the alleged sexual encounters between the 12-year-old girl and Batton after a classmate of the alleged child victim approached a Hays County Sheriff’s deputy to report the sexual relationship, court documents state.

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ANDY SEVILLA reports for the Hays Free Press where this story was originally published. It is reprinted here through a news partnership between the Free Press and the San Marcos Mercury.

COVER: STOCK PHOTO by DAVID FULMER. MERCURY GRAPHIC by BRAD ROLLINS.

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CORRECTION 11:46 a.m. JULY 19: Due to an editing error, this story originally misspelled the suspect’s surname on multiple references. His name is Michael Batton, not Bratton.