Left: Payton Shires in a Franklin County court on June 26, 2024 (screengrab/WBNS); Right: she appears in a booking photo (Columbus Police Department)
An Ohio mental health counselor could spend the next few years behind bars after using her position as a social worker to repeatedly sexually abuse a 13-year-old boy who she had been hired to help.
In May, Payton Harleigh Shires, 24, pleaded guilty to four counts of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor, one count of inducing panic with a firearm, and one count of intimidating a witness or victim.
On Thursday, Franklin County Court of Common Pleas Judge Mark Serrott sentenced Shires to a potential sentence of four years and nine months in state prison — with 253 days of credit for pretrial detention. She will have the possibility of judicial release for good behavior, a form of parole with mandatory counseling, after 18 months. If denied early release, the disgraced social worker will remain on supervised release for five years. She will also have to register as a sex offender every 180 days for 25 years after release.
Multiple statements were made during the sentencing hearing, according to a courtroom report by The Columbus Dispatch.
The judge reportedly credited Shires for some real remorse but chided the convicted woman for violating her position of trust.
“He was a child,” Serrott told her. “He was trying to get the help he needed.”
A sharper statement from the boy’s mother was read aloud in court. She said the family had lost faith in a system meant to help due to the “devastating impact” that Shires’ actions had on them.
“Instead, he was manipulated, groomed and sexually abused by Ms. Shires,” the statement said. “I regret I ever let you in my house.”
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Shires was arrested on her birthday in October 2023, just four months after she obtained her social worker license.
Quickly after being licensed, she was hired by the National Youth Advocate Program. In late September 2023, she was reported to the Columbus Police Department for allegedly admitting to the abuse during a phone call with the boy’s mother as police listened in.
During that call, the boy’s mother said she saw text messages from Shires to her son asking if his mother “had seen the videos or messages” or if those videos had been deleted. Those texts and videos were not deleted, the Columbus Police Department would come to discover. A forensic investigation of the boy’s cellphone turned up several additional incriminating messages and at least one video of the child and the adult engaging in sexual conduct.
Later, when out on $500,000 bond, she showed up at the victim’s home with a gun — claiming the boy’s mother “ruined her life” by reporting her to law enforcement. Alleged threats to kill the mother and herself went nowhere — but the ordeal did violate several conditions of her pretrial release.
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The defendant, for her part, performed a mea culpa — and thank you — directed at the victim’s mother on Thursday.
“I was not thinking rationally at the time that I showed up to the mother’s house,” she said. “I was extremely suicidal. I never had intentions to harm anybody but myself. And, I’m just thankful that she took the right steps to call the police. She saved my life that day. And, also, I just feel horrible for the mistakes I made.”
While open to the apologies, the judge took a slightly harsher tone when recounting a presentencing argument from the defendant. Shires, when making her case for leniency, suggested the victim had tried to coerce or blackmail her into continuing their illicit relationship.
“You’re the adult,” Serrott lectured. “You’re trained professionally to avoid situations like this.”
Matt Naham contributed to this report.
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