A judge handed down what many in the courtroom considered a lenient punishment Tuesday to a disgraced Louisiana mayor convicted of sexually abusing a teenage boy, allowing her to walk away with just 90 days behind bars despite a 10-year sentence hanging over her head.
Misty Roberts, 44, the former two-term mayor of DeRidder, stood before Judge Kent Savoie at the Beauregard Parish Courthouse as he delivered the suspended sentence following her felony convictions on two counts — indecency with a minor and carnal knowledge of a minor — each carrying five years.
Rather than making Roberts serve the full decade, Savoie structured the punishment to keep her out of prison as long as she completes psychological counseling and submits to random drug and alcohol screening.
She must also pay a $5,000 fine, cover $300 in prosecution costs, and maintain total distance from the teenage victim and his entire family.
A $150,000 bond was available to Roberts that would have freed her while she explored an appeal, but her attorney confirmed she passed on the option.
“She wants to get it over with. She doesn’t want it hanging over her head,” said defense attorney Adam Johnson.
The courtroom atmosphere was charged from the outset. Prosecutor Charles Robinson requested the judge order an on-the-spot drug test, pointing to Roberts’s conduct at earlier proceedings as cause for concern.
“She had sores on her face. I got the impression she was using narcotics,” Robinson told the court. The judge denied the request.
The most gripping moments came when the victim’s family stepped forward to speak.
The boy’s mother delivered a searing statement that drew a sharp contrast between the image Roberts projected and the danger she allegedly posed.
“Danger doesn’t always come looking like danger. It doesn’t always look like a man with candy in a van or a stranger we tell our kids to be aware of,” she said. “This danger came from a predator with hair extensions, high heels, Botox and other augmentations.”
She told the court her son’s life was upended in the aftermath.
The once sports-focused teenager grew anxious and withdrawn as word of the encounter spread through his school and across social media.
At a football game, an adult shouted “mayor slayer” at the boy. His family reported waking to the sound of him crying out in his sleep.
The mother also pushed back hard against Roberts’s version of events, which she said placed responsibility on the teenager.
“You claimed my son was the aggressor but why didn’t you run? Instead, you took a bathroom break and came back to mount him,” she said from the stand. Her final word on Roberts’s remorse was blunt: “She is not sorry for what she did, she is only sorry it got out.”
When Roberts took her turn to speak, she faced forward — deliberately avoiding eye contact with the victim’s mother seated nearby — and tearfully addressed the court.
“It was reckless. It was irresponsible. I wish I could do it over,” she said. She told the room she could not undo the damage inflicted on the teenagers caught up in the fallout or erase what the internet had put them through. “I’m here just asking for grace and mercy and for the opportunity to do what the Lord wants me to do — to be a mom,” Roberts said.
Her remarks drew audible scoffs from the packed gallery, where her ex-husband, Duncan Clanton, sat watching. “I made a lot of promises to put DeRidder on the map. This isn’t the way I wanted to do it,” she told the crowd.
Judge Savoie did not spare Roberts from pointed words of his own.
“You have a tendency to minimize and to blame, to some extent, the victim of the crime,” he told her from the bench.
He noted the victim’s family had moved him deeply. Court officers then cuffed Roberts and walked her to a waiting prison van — still wearing the heels she had arrived in.
Robinson wasted no time dismissing her emotional display after court concluded.
“I did not see a single tear. Her face was dry,” he said. He had pushed hard for the maximum 17-year term, arguing her position made the crime especially serious. “She was not just some crazy mom, she was the mayor. She was in a position of trust. There’s no way an elected official can have sex with a child and not go to jail,” he said.
The underlying incident took place at a birthday pool party Roberts hosted on July 20, 2024, while still serving as mayor.
Trial evidence included a photograph captured by a partygoer and testimony from Roberts’s own children, who witnessed events through a window.
The victim told jurors, “While it was happening, I couldn’t feel my body.” A jury needed less than an hour to convict her at a March retrial after an earlier proceeding ended in mistrial.
Roberts made history in 2018 as DeRidder’s first female mayor and secured a second term in 2022. She resigned shortly before her August 2024 arrest.
She is now classified as a Tier 1 registered sex offender, and her children have lived with Clanton since December 2024, with visits requiring his approval.
Her brother, Brandon Lee Roberts, 40, received a 32-year prison sentence in November for raping two women, one of whom was 13 at the start of the abuse.
