A man will spend years on the sex offender registry after a plea connected to his actions at a Triad farmer’s market last year.
According to the Guilford County courts, Ivan Hugh-McDonald Peden entered a guilty plea on Feb. 26, 2024, to indecent exposure and sexual battery and will register as a sex offender. Sex offender registration lasts 30 years, and he received a 45 day suspended sentence for the indecent exposure and a 75 day suspended sentence for the sexual battery, as well 18 months probation.
The attorney who represented Peden said this was an Alford plea, where the individual does not admit guilt but enters a guilty plea because “the individual feels that it is in his/her best interest to do so.” The state dismissed additional indecent liberties and secret peeping charges as a result of this plea….
The Guilford County Sheriff’s Office arrested Ivan Hugh-McDonald Peden after they said they got reports of two sex offenses at the Piedmont Triad Farmers Market in Colfax. The two incidents happened on June 24 and July 14, 2023.
He belongs in prison.
The 71-year-old former clergyperson was charged with felony indecent liberties with a child, felony indecent exposure, misdemeanor sexual battery and misdemeanor secret peeping. He has also been banned from the Piedmont Triad Farmers Market.
Documents state that Peden pleaded guilty to a charge of simple assault in August of 2021, which stemmed from a charge on March 7, 2020, in Forsyth County. Reportedly, the incident involved a teenage boy working at a Forsyth County grocery store.
The victim’s grandparents say Peden was physically aggressive with the teenager. At one point, he reportedly wrote down his phone number on a receipt, forced it into the teen’s pocket and grabbed his backside. Court documents in that case state that the assault stemmed from Peden grabbing the victim’s butt “multiple times.”
At the time of his arrest, an adult victim who wished to remain anonymous said that Peden, who he had seen at the market multiple times, was in the market restroom when he walked in on June 24.
What garbage. That wasn’t the first time he did something like that and it won’t be the last.