Sgt. 1st Class Marquez Parker was taken into custody in an El Paso County courtroom on Monday after his bond was raised to $150,000 by a judge for allegedly violating his protection order in a child sexual abuse case.

Judge Amy Cullen Cano partially based her ruling on new allegations that Parker did not follow an order prohibiting him from contacting minors when he attended an eighth-grade graduation ceremony in May.

Cano is the third judge in the 4th Judicial District to handle Parker’s case, which began in November. Her appointment to the bench by Gov. Jared Polis began on June 1 to fill the vacancy left by the soon-retiring Judge David Prince.

The order was placed upon Parker in his ongoing criminal case in which he is accused of sexually assaulting at least one child under 15 while in a position of trust and possessing more than 28,000 child sexual abuse materials.

In his previous hearing on May 19, Parker waived his preliminary hearing, which would have heard testimony to establish probable cause for the 64 sex offenses he is facing. The case remains scheduled for arraignment before Cano on July 20.

Based on the new allegations, Cano set an increased bond of $150,000 for Parker, $100,000 less than the prosecution’s request.

“I think my struggle is when someone is facing these types of allegations, why are we going to a middle school?” Cano rhetorically asked. “Why are we going to any school?”

Parker’s Attorney, Joshua Lindley, conferred with his client after the judge voiced her concerns with his argument that the protection order was not violated because of the lack of clarity in what “contact” means, leaving the order “overbroad.”

The partially redacted order obtained by The Gazette shows Parker is to have “no contact with anyone underage of 18” except his own children while supervised by their mother.

“It’s not a difficult concept to understand given the restriction,” prosecutor Kelson Castain argued to the court. “It is mind-boggling the defendant would go to an eighth-grade graduation where he would be surrounded by children under 18.”

Furthermore, Castain said the language in the order had been particularly written because of concerns that Parker would intentionally or indirectly influence his children, who are witnesses in the case.

Parker’s arrest affidavit alleges that staff at the school contacted police after seeing Parker with the children’s mother at the ceremony and believing he may have violated the protection order. Police later uncovered two other instances of Parker picking up his children from school without their mother present, which was the mother’s “order,” according to Lindley.

Cano questioned Lindley about why there was no request for an exception to the order regarding the ceremony, and was concerned that Parker believed the children’s mother could “override” orders of the court.

Lindley did not explain the lack of such a request but said both instances of Parker picking up his children occurred when the mother was unable to, including one school day impacted by snow.

Still, Cano found that visitation without permitted supervision is “pretty clear” and denied Lindley’s motion to reject increasing bond.

“It says no contact with anyone under 18, and that’s where children are presumed to be, like school, Chuck-e-Cheese and the zoo, where you are guaranteed to run into children,” Cano said in ruling to raise Parker’s bond as he lowered his head.

Parker has already posted more than $125,000 in bonds, but took nearly four days to post a $400 for one count of violating a protection order.

Lindley claimed this was because Parker did not realize he needed two signatures when he went to a bondsman days after being notified about his new warrant by Colorado Springs police and was called back to base before he could finish the process.

Castain told the court that during that time, Parker effectively vanished for three hours by leaving his post without notifying anyone. When he was contacted, Castain claimed Parker tried to negotiate with the command staff as they ordered him to return to Fort Carson to be arrested.

“No, no, no, don’t order me to come back,” Castain alleged Parker told a Fort Carson commander.

Cano did not request to hear from a special agent with Fort Carson’s Criminal Investigation Division, under the Department of the Army, who was in the courtroom gallery ready to answer any questions about his arrest.

Lindley had previously told the court that Parker’s military employment created mechanisms to ensure he would obey court orders and attend his appearances. Castain said on Monday that Parker’s actions in the days after he was notified of his new arrest warrant added to his concern to raise Parker’s bond because he “fought against those systems.”

Ahead of Monday’s hearing, Parker had not missed a court appearance.

The prosecution also requested that the bond in his new protection order violation case be raised from $400 to $50,000, which Cano denied.

Cano had asked Lindley if he was ready to proceed with a pretrial conference in that misdemeanor case, but he had not been formally assigned to it and was unable to review the school’s surveillance footage due to a mistake by the prosecution.

Parker’s pretrial conference was reset to July 20, the same date as the arraignment in his other case.