By Joe Macenka
Media General News Service

A correctional officer at Beaumont Juvenile Correctional Center has been arrested on charges that he sexually assaulted a juvenile in Richmond in 2008.

Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice officials said there was no indication that Leonard H. Jones III had been involved in any sexual misconduct while on the job at the facility in Powhatan County, the state’s largest juvenile correctional center.

Jones, 36, was arrested Monday evening by authorities in Powhatan and turned over to Richmond police, who processed him on three counts of aggravated sexual battery, one count of taking indecent liberties with a child under age 15, one of taking indecent liberties with a child under 14 and one of taking indecent liberties.

Jones was arraigned yesterday by Judge Walter W. Stout III of Richmond Circuit Court, who ordered him held without bond at the Richmond City Jail.

Jones has been suspended from his job at Beaumont, said Sam J. Abed, deputy director of operations for the Department of Juvenile Justice.

Authorities said Jones was living in the 3600 block of Louise Drive in Chester, just west of Chesterfield County’s Harrowgate Elementary School, when he was indicted last week by a multijurisdictional grand jury.

Richmond Circuit Court documents indicate that the alleged offenses occurred in 2008. All six charges involve the same victim, said Kelli Hall Burnett, an assistant Richmond commonwealth’s attorney.

Burnett referred additional questions about the case to Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Mary E. Langer, who is out of the office until Friday and could not be reached yesterday.

Abed said that when officials with the Juvenile Justice Department learned of the indictment, they checked at Beaumont to see if there had been any complaints of a sexual nature involving Jones at the correctional center, but they found none.

“There were no issues with his work performance,” Abed said.

Beaumont, with about 280 males, holds inmates from age 16 to 21.

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Contact Joe Macenka at (804) 649-6804 or jmacenka@timesdispatch.com.