Wayne A. Smith, 27, is back in Nebraska, accused of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl from Blair and transporting her 400 miles to Missouri.

So she could live with him in an abandoned school bus.

Young love, it’s so hard to figure.

The Omaha World-Herald reports that last July, the girl’s family reported her missing. She had been living with her father but the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services was rethinking that arrangement.

With help from the Missouri State Patrol, detectives tracked the girl to a remote location about 6½ hours away.

On July 18, authorities confronted the couple. The girl gave a fake name. Smith said she was his wife.

Eventually the girl fessed up. She told Missouri detectives that she left with Smith on June 30. After a week at one of Smith’s friends they got their own place – the school bus –  on Smith’s mom’s property.

The girl initially told investigators that she shared a bed with Smith but had not had sex with him.

That was sort of a fib.

She eventually told detectives that she had had sex with Smith on a regular basis starting when they were back in Nebraska. She said she was afraid she would be taken away from her father so she, uh, took herself away from her father. Besides, she loved Smith and she did not want him to get into any trouble.

After all that, here’s the craziest part of the story: Smith is the second man from Blair charged with sexually assaulting the same girl. The other man, Jeremy J. Mann, 29, began a sexual relationship with her when she was 13 and he was 27. Mann, who has no connection to Smith except for the girl, pleaded guilty last year to first-degree sexual assault of a minor.

No word whether the girl loved Mann also but he was sentenced to 10 to 12 years in prison.

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