MOULTRIE — Police are seeking a man who reportedly had sex with a 12-year-old girl, who initially said the sex was consensual and then changed her story, a Moultrie Police Department spokesman said.

“I’m still trying to find the guy and get his side of the story and see what he says,” police investigator Denise Whittaker said.

The girl was reported as a runaway by her guardians, who said she left home at 1:30 a.m. July 16 and was found at noon of the same day. The girl at first told her guardians that she had been “out drinking, smoking and having sex all night,” police said.

“She didn’t say anything about it being against her will until her guardians started talking about discipline,” Whittaker said.

The man never asked the girl’s age, Whittaker said, and she never told him. The girl appears to be at least 16 years old, she added.

However, the state considers having sex with anyone under 16 a crime, and the man could be charged with statutory rape.

The incident was not reported until six days after the girl ran away, police said.

“The situation is her guardians came in and reported it because they were worried about any repercussions from her experience,” Whittaker said. “Her guardians weren’t reporting it to pursue it for prosecution, just for DFCS (Department of Family and Children Services) in case there is a pregnancy or sexually transmitted disease.”

The girl told police that she rode her bicycle to Wal-Mart, where she got in a pickup truck with a black male in his early 20s. The man reportedly gave the girl cigarettes and Bacardi rum and stopped on a dirt road, where he touched her and got on top of her.

The girl reported that she pushed the man off her and told him no, and he told her not to tell anyone what had happened.

At that time, the girl told police, the man took her to a Third Street Southeast residence and left her outside in the truck. When the girl went inside because it was hot in the truck, she reported, the man held her down on the couch and had sex with her.

Whittaker said that the girl has been in Moultrie a short time with the guardians she has now and was molested in the past.