Rogers Sex Offender Jailed Since Undercover Sting Now Charged With Raping Relative

BENTONVILLE, Ark. — A Rogers man on the state sex offender registry who has been in the Benton County jail since an undercover sheriff’s detective arrested him in July is now charged with raping and committing incest with a female relative.

Adam Wayne Worthen, 50, was served Tuesday with a warrant charging him with rape and incest, according to Benton County court records and the jail roster. Bond was set at $500,000, and a judge ordered him to have no contact with the victim.

Worthen was already jailed in a separate case in which he is accused of arranging to sexually abuse a 7-year-old girl offered to him by a detective posing as the child’s mother.

The new charges

According to a probable cause affidavit by Benton County Sheriff’s Office Detective Alison Nguyen, the relative came forward on Aug. 6, a week after Worthen’s July arrest, and gave a statement to Sgt. Haggard.

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She told investigators the abuse began while Worthen was living in the family’s home after he was released from jail, and that he told her he wanted to teach her about sex and that he and his sister had done the same when they were young, the affidavit said.

She said the two had sexual contact almost nightly after that, the affidavit said. Worthen would text her “shed time,” which she understood to mean she should find a reason to get away from the rest of the family and meet him in a storage shed on the property, according to the affidavit. After he moved to a house in Rogers, he would text that he needed help with his yard, which she said she also knew to mean sex.

She told Nguyen in a follow-up interview Aug. 20 that the last time they had intercourse was around June. The last contact was July 4 at Pea Ridge City Park, where he tried to grab her, the affidavit said.

Worthen told her to delete all of her texts and not to tell anyone, because he would go back to jail, according to the affidavit. Nguyen recorded the messages on her body camera, the affidavit said.

The affidavit, which is heavily redacted, does not give the relative’s age.

The July sting

Nguyen wrote in an earlier affidavit that other law enforcement agencies had alerted her that a local sex offender was using an unregistered account in a Northwest Arkansas chat group on a social media platform that was “sexual in nature,” with members sharing nudity and openly discussing sex acts.

Using an undercover persona, Nguyen joined the group and began messaging Worthen privately. She told him she had children ages 4 and 7, according to the affidavit.

During the conversations, Worthen told the detective he had slept with his sister when they were younger and that he was on probation “for stuff like this,” the affidavit said. When the detective described past abuse of her 7-year-old, Worthen replied that he could do the same and described sexual contact he wanted to have with the child, according to the affidavit.

On July 29, Worthen told the detective he was going to buy flavored lubricant, then drove to an apartment complex in Bentonville whose address she had given him, the affidavit said. He texted “Here” as he pulled in and was taken into custody. Deputies found condoms and chocolate-flavored lubricant in his vehicle and seized his phone and a USB drive, according to the affidavit.

Prosecutors charged him in September with conspiracy to commit rape of a child under 14 and failing to comply with sex offender registration requirements for not registering a social media account. His bond in that case was set at $150,000.

His record

Worthen pleaded guilty in 2022 to charges of distributing, possessing or viewing sexually explicit material involving children and was placed on probation, court records show. In 2024 he pleaded guilty to failing to comply with sex offender reporting requirements, and his probation in the earlier case was revoked.

After his July arrest, prosecutors asked a judge to revoke his probation again. A revocation hearing is set for Monday.

Rape is punishable by 10 to 40 years or life in prison. Incest carries three to 10 years.

The Benton County public defender’s office has been appointed to represent him.