| By Neil Johnson, Reporter/Anchor, Big Radio |

A judge hands a former Rock County Sheriff’s Deputy six years in prison for sex crimes prosecutors say went on half a decade and included grooming young boys with fentanyl and other addictive drugs.

Gary Huber is the former deputy and former U.S. Marine who prosecutors say drugged and fondled multiple boys he knows between 2010 and 2016.

Huber already pleaded guilty earlier this year to four lesser counts, while six other counts, including repeated sex assault of a minor and child enticement, got thrown out.

He denies drugging the boys, but victims say he gave them the opioids vicodin, tramodol and fentanyl until some of the boys became addicted to the drugs.

Huber, now 36, was accused in 2021 and arrested at his parents’ residence in Indiana. None of the sex crimes are thought to have occurred during a five-year stint he spent on the sheriff’s department. He resigned from the sheriff’s office to avoid an internal investigation after the sex crime allegations surfaced, prosecutors and the state justice department say.

Rock County Judge Derrick Grubb called the 2 counts of causing a teenage minor to view sexual activity, and 2 counts of exposing intimate parts to a child “egregious” crimes.

Grubb pointed out the crimes happened while Huber was a college student pursuing a criminal justice degree. He says in pre-sentencing interviews and during a statement Huber made in court Tuesday, that the former deputy failed to take ample responsibility for his actions.

Grubb called Huber’s pre-sentencing statement and apology for earlier bad decisions “generic.” Grub said Huber didn’t specify exactly what he regretted or was sorry about. Grubb says he’d learned at one point during earlier plea negotiations that Huber had texted a relative joking about how allegations of some of the m0re serious sex crimes were being thrown out.

Grubb shot down an argument by Huber’s lawyer, Steve Zeleski, that Huber’s punishment — or, at most, a one-year sentence in Rock County Jail.

Zaleski says prior to the sex crimes here, Huber was injured in a roadside bombing during combat in Iraq, and that Huber had suffered physical and psychological damage from his wartime experiences while still a teenager. Zeleski says Huber has grown as a person since then.

Grubb said he wonders why Huber’s records show no concerted treatment for Huber’s  problems other than initial checkups at a VA facility.

He says Huber at one point stopped taking medication prescribed for combat-related PTSD because he thought he no longer needed it.

Assistant Disrict Attorney Alex Goulart rode allegations Huber gave boys strong opioids and marijuana to try to cajole them into sex acts. Some of the boys were as young as 9 at the time. Goulart said Huber’s earlier valor as a combat soldier, and later, as a deputy don’t line up with his criminal behavior in the years in between.

Goulart called that disparity “the good, the bad and the ugly.”