A man who pleaded no contest to a 2005 charge of statutory rape involving a 14-year-old Corvallis girl was sentenced to 15 months in prison on Thursday.

As part of a plea bargain, Bradley Reeves, 23, a registered sex offender from Tillamook, pleaded no contest to the rape charge in exchange for dismissal of the charges of sexual abuse and contributing to the sexual delinquency of a minor.

"This sentence is a stipulated sentence between attorneys," Judge Bryan Hodges told Reeves after sentencing. "If it were my sentence, you'd be going to prison for the rest of your life."

Hodges is a retired circuit court judge from Lane County who was filling a temporary need in Benton County Circuit Court.

Reeves evaded a 2005 warrant for his arrest in relation to the Corvallis charges for more than three years before he resurfaced in Tillamook on March 11.

"One of our probation officers received a call that said he was staying at a residence here," said Tillamook County Undersheriff Terry Huntsman.

The officer then picked up Reeves on the Benton County warrant, Huntsman said.

Reeves was also arrested on three counts - one for each year he was missing - of failure to register as a sex offender.

On Jan. 3, 2005, Corvallis police looked into an allegation that Reeves had a consensual relationship with a 14-year-old girl in Corvallis, according to investigative reports. Tillamook police were already familiar with the man from a 2003 conviction for attempted sexual abuse of a 12-year-old girl.

Reeves pleaded guilty in 2003 in Tillamook County to the attempted sexual abuse of the 12-year-old girl. Reeves was 18 years old at the time of the incident.

He was sentenced in July 2003 to supervised probation and was required to register as a sex offender.

According to court documents, the 14-year-old Corvallis girl told police that she had three sexual encounters during January 2005 with the man, who was 19 years old at the time, at a friend's house where the two met.

Police seized love letters between the two, written throughout a month-long period.

But the letters and phone calls stopped by Jan. 21, 2005, after the man reportedly told the girl he had to leave the area because police were looking for him, according to police reports.

By April 2005, Corvallis police had completed their investigation. A grand jury indicted Reeves and a warrant for his arrest was issued.

But by then Reeves had disappeared. Corvallis investigators believed he was in Tennessee, but the warrant was only valid in the Western states, Benton County District Attorney John Haroldson said.

Although Reeves did not have permission to travel outside the state as a registered sex offender, police had to wait for a break. They received one when Reeves was found in Tillamook in March.