Brevard County prosecutors have sent a sex offender back to prison, this time for life, for molesting a 10-year-old Melbourne girl.

A Brevard County jury found DOUGLAS L. RYAN, 34, guilty of lewd or lascivious molestation of a child and lewd or lascivious conduct following a three-day trial presented by Assistant State Attorneys Elizabeth Garvey and Christine Babb.

Melbourne Police arrested Ryan in 2023 after the girl confided in her elementary school teacher that Ryan forced himself on her in a mobile home off West Eau Gallie Boulevard and John Rhodes Boulevard. He had volunteered to help the girl and her family move from one unit to another nearby.

Ryan had been free from jail only nine days, after violating his sex-offender probation from a previous offense. Ryan served eight years in prison for a 2011 conviction for lewd or lascivious battery on a child.

Witnesses at Ryan’s trial included the victim, now 11, her grandmother, a Melbourne Police officer, in investigator from the Department of Children and Families, and a forensic interviewer for the child protection team from the Children’s Advocacy Center.

After the jury’s April 30 guilty verdict, it heard further evidence and determined that Ryan is a Prison Release Reoffender, a status that mandates the maximum statutory sentence. Circuit Judge Charles Crawford then sentenced Ryan to life in prison and ordered that Ryan be designated a sexual predator.

“It’s not only justice for the victim, it’s justice for the community, too, because he will never get near another child again,” Garvey said.