Winfred Eugene Vance Jr., to the right in red, is escorted to the Cullman County Courthouse by a deputy.

Sex abuse allegations against a former contract employee at the Cullman County Court Referral Office (CRO) kept the suspect, 62 year-old Winfred Eugene Vance, Jr., incarcerated through all of 2015.

Vance’s case, which includes four felony charges of 1st degree sexual abuse and one count of 1st degree sodomy, continued its meandering path through the criminal justice system this year, following his arrest in December of 2014.

Vance was jailed following a district court complaint that alleged he subjected two female victims to “sexual conduct by forcible compulsion.”

The CRO office is tied to the Cullman County Drug Court. As a court referral employee, Vance was responsible for conducting drug screenings for those ordered into the court referral program as part of their probation.

But law enforcement accused Vance of abusing his position — as well as the vulnerability of the alleged victims — for sex and sexual communication.

“He was supposed to be mentoring the people there — helping them,” said Todd Chiaranda, director of the Cullman Narcotics Enforcement Team (CNET), at the time of Vance’s arrest.

“Instead, he made several sexual advances to women there, and, from evidence collected, we believe he was threatening them with failure [of the drug screenings].”

A federal lawsuit against the CRO, which has since been dismissed, also sought to accuse Vance of abusing referrals through his alleged “indifference to the civil rights and liberties of the plaintiffs.”

That suit claimed Vance, and, through their alleged negligence, other CRO employees, violated the plaintiffs’ rights to due process, privacy, unreasonable search and seizure, cruel and unusual punishment, and equal protection. U.S. District Judge Abdul K. Kallan dismissed the suit without prejudice in June of this year, leaving the plaintiffs free to bring federal claims against Vance and CRO at a later time.

Because they have a history of working with the CRO, judges for the Cullman County Circuit Court recused themselves from the Vance criminal case. The Alabama Supreme Court instead assigned Judge Phil K. Seay of the St. Clair Circuit Court, to oversee the case.

Vance’s defense team motioned for a change of venue earlier this year. Prosecutors objected, noting that no change of venue should occur without first attempting to select a jury at the present venue, and that the slow development of the case has not drawn extraordinary or frequent media attention that might unduly prejudice the jury pool.

Judge Seay has not issued a decision on whether to move the trial venue out of Cullman County. Vance’s case has been continued for the Feb. 2016 docket.