Man opts for bench trial in child assault cases

A Dodge County man who authorities said physically and sexually assaulted children has waived his right to a jury trial, and instead will have a judge decide his fate.
William Patrick Wyttenback, 54, has five open criminal cases against him in Dodge County District Court.
All told, he faces two counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct; one count each of second-degree and third-degree criminal sexual conduct; three counts of third-degree assault-past pattern of child abuse; three counts of terroristic threats; one count of domestic assault by strangulation — all felonies.
He is also charged with two counts of gross misdemeanor malicious punishment of a child and four counts of misdemeanor domestic assault.
Wyttenback appeared in court Monday morning; three of the cases were set for a court trial to begin Tuesday.
The first investigation began on Halloween 2024, when a social worker contacted the Dodge County Sheriff’s Office with a report of child abuse.
According to the criminal complaint, Wyttenback’s former wife provided the social worker with videos from a camera within her home. The videos were timestamped in the evening of Oct. 28, 2024.
One of the videos covers the main living area; in it, authorities could see and hear Wyttenback yelling at two children, reportedly making several threats of violence to both.
Among the threats to the children, Wyttenback said he would beat them with a belt until they were no longer breathing; told the oldest child — who was under the age of 12 — to stop what they were doing or they would be breathing through a tube; and also told that child, “your last day is on my list,” the court documents say.
Later, that child can be seen lying on the floor, crying. When Wyttenback stands up from the couch, the child begins crawling backwards, seemingly afraid.
The criminal complaint says Wyttenback grabs the victim by the hair and drags them, uses a wooden object to hit the child multiple times, then picks the child up by the neck.
That’s when the younger child tells Wyttenback not to choke the victim, the complaint continues, so Wyttenback throws the wooden object at that child and says, “you’re next.”
The older child is then thrown to the floor; when they stand up, Wyttenback shoves the child and “bends (their) wrist to an extreme,” the documents say.
Less than a month later, a child told a social worker that Wyttenback had sexually assaulted her about a year earlier. When she told him he was touching her inappropriately, Wyttenback reportedly said “this is what I was afraid of.”
The next month, in December 2024, a second child told law enforcement that Wyttenback had sexually assaulted her multiple times, beginning in July 2022.
According to that criminal complaint, the victim said when she confronted him the morning after the first assault, Wyttenback said “he didn’t know he did, but if he did, then he did, and if he didn’t, then he didn’t.”
He also allegedly told her if she disclosed the abuse he would go to jail.
The assaults included vaginal and digital penetration, as well as oral sex, the document says.