Retired Aurora police sergeant charged with child sex crimes

A retired police sergeant who received national attention for his actions during the 2012 Aurora theater shooting is now facing child sexual abuse charges in Douglas County after multiple children said he sexually and physically abused them for years.

Michael Hawkins, 55, was charged July 29 with six felony counts of sexual assault of a child by a person in a position of trust and a single count of misdemeanor child abuse in alleged incidents that spanned from 2002 to 2021, court records show.

He is accused of raping an elementary-aged girl, groping multiple children, using “arrest control tactics” that physically hurt them and, in one instance, holding a boy underwater until he nearly drowned, according to an affidavit filed against him.

The Denver Post does not identify victims of sexual abuse and is not identifying how Hawkins came in contact with the children in order to protect their privacy. The abuse is not alleged to have happened while Hawkins was on duty as an officer with the Aurora Police Department.

Hawkins “adamantly denies the accusations,” his attorney, Christopher Estoll, said Tuesday.

“Mr. Hawkins has been cooperative and in communication with the prosecution throughout the investigation, but adamantly denies the accusations,” Estoll said. “The legal process will provide him with the opportunity to present additional information related to these allegations in the future.”

Estoll declined further comment, but wrote in an Aug. 1 court filing that at least one of the people bringing accusations was “not a credible witness and is highly manipulative.”

“Mr. Hawkins is presumed innocent and should not be preemptively punished by being kept in custody,” Estoll wrote in the brief, seeking a personal recognizance bond for Hawkins. A judge granted a $50,000 bond.

The brief also notes that the criminal investigation began in 2022 but charges were not filed until July, and that Hawkins has no prior criminal history. He does not pose a threat to public safety, Estoll wrote.

A spokesman for the 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office, Eric Ross, said Tuesday that prosecutors did not believe they could prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt when the affidavit against Hawkins was first authored in 2022, but that further investigation changed that.

“Once we had what we needed and we felt we had a case, then charges were formally filed,” he said.

The allegations span Hawkins’ tenure in the Aurora Police Department between 2005 and 2018, and multiple witnesses and victims told investigators that Hawkins’ job as a police officer impacted his behavior.

The former police sergeant experienced post-traumatic stress disorder after he responded to the 2012 mass shooting at an Aurora movie theater in which 12 people were killed and 70 wounded, according to an affidavit filed against him. He received national attention in the wake of that attack when he testified during the shooter’s jury trial about carrying a dying 6-year-old girl out of the theater that night.

The rape of the elementary-aged girl is alleged to have happened around 2012, but it is not clear from court records whether it allegedly occurred before or after the theater shooting. One person interviewed by police said Hawkins “claimed all of his issues were related to the theater shooting,” but that, in reality, “many of the issues existed beforehand,” according to the affidavit.