More Teen Girls Come Forward After Grape Creek Child Sex Abuse Trial Begins

Two possible new witnesses, a 16-year-old who claims to have had sex with 33-year-old Tucker Wayne McCrea, as well as a 15-year-old who states the accused child molester sent her explicit nude pictures, may be called to testify against him on Thursday as witnesses for the state.

McCrea has been on trial since Monday for the alleged continual sexual abuse of a little girl in Grape Creek between the summer of 2008 and the summer of 2010, a period at which the girl, her brother, her father and his female roommate had occupied the double-wide. McCrea was a frequent overnight guest—many stating he more or less lived there—and the girl’s mother was away at prison. At the time of the alleged abuse, the child was between 6 and 7.

On Wednesday morning, the girl, now a month shy of turning 13, entered the courtroom to share her account of what happened to her six summers ago. Her testimony began swiftly, as she was eager to relay how she loved her school and her family, but it slowed to a stonewall about 30 minutes in as discussion turned toward Tucker McCrea.

Sitting at the witness stand with a small lime green bear before her, the near-teen acknowledged that there had been a man—her dad’s friend—staying at the house during those summers, and she knew his name. But when she was asked to say it, the child’s face froze in solemn timidity. She lowered her head slightly and stared straight ahead, not once daring a glance across the courtroom at the defendant, not opening her mouth for filler speech.

State’s prosecutor and 51^st First Assistant District Attorney John Best tried to coax her, asking if she knew who it was and directing the question-and-answer exchange to more comfortable topics before coming back to ask for the name. Still, the child withdrew; she didn’t dare say it out loud.

After several minutes, Best approached the witness with a sheet of paper and a pen. He offered them, and she wrote down a name, but she couldn’t bring herself to repeat it out loud.

“Does it say Tucker?” he asked, glancing down at the sheet.

“Yes,” she replied softly. She then managed to utter his last name quietly, admitting she didn’t know how to spell it and wasn’t sure if the pronunciation was right. “McCrea,” she said in a near whisper.

The eyes of the jury darted attentively between Best, the child and the defendant as her testimony continued. She was on the stand for nearly two hours before she had to take a break, overcome with emotion and unable to speak.

By then, the prosecutor had narrowed his line of questioning to the alleged abuse, alternating between open-ended questions that were met with silence like, ‘what happened the first time he did something to you,’ and restricting to questions she could answer with simple words and phrases, such as, ‘did he touch you’ and ‘did he use his hands’.

The girl managed to relay that the first instance occurred at her father’s house in the shower and that he had touched her with his hands, but was reluctant to say more. She bore a muted expression of shame and meekness, like she wanted to say more but couldn’t make herself do so.

She recalled for the jury how she told her mom of the abuse after reading a pamphlet called “Sam’s Secret” as part of the radKIDS program, a program dedicated to educating children on safety.

She also recalled that in the summer of 2012 she had been living out of town but returned to visit her father in Grape Creek. That summer she stayed the night with a friend, a sleepover that ended abruptly with the flicking of light switches.

“She kept turning off all the lights and I kept telling her I was scared of the dark,” the girl said. Eventually, as the switch flicking persisted, the little girl called her father to pick her up.

“The next day, she asked me why I was scared of the dark, and I told her I had been touched wrongly, and instead of helping me…she laughed at me,” the child said.

That was the first time the little girl had told anyone about what had happened to her in her dad’s trailer, she said, and when she saw her friend laughing, she said she felt as if no one would ever believe her. The abuse, she said, almost always happened in the dark.

At 11:05 a.m., discussion had turned back to the bathroom, the shower. The girl was weary and reluctant to answer even the most delicately-phrased questions, and had retreated into herself, responding only occasionally with forced whispers. It wasn’t a place she wanted to go. Judge Barbara Walther called for a recess and, after about 30 minutes, a decision was made to continue the testimony with the support of the child’s counselor, who had been instructed to sit at her side but not to speak or guide her testimony.

When testimony resumed, the 12-year-old got off to a good start, quickly responding with short answers as Best posed questions about that night in the summer of 2009. Gradually, the girl began to relate accounts of five separate instances in which McCrea had abused her, beginning in the shower in early summer, continuing through her father’s birthday on July 5, and concluding around the time her mother got home from prison in late August 2009.

The various accounts took place in the shower, in her bedroom as she lay sleeping at night, in the living room when her father and roommate had run out to Walmart and in the backyard swimming pool, she said.

Her testimony slowed as she dredged up the memories, and the girl often became confused, having difficulty recalling and repeating when and how the abuse had occurred. She told the jury McCrea had used his hands and mouth to touch her “privates” and “chestal area” and said she had once seen McCrea’s genitalia when he asked her to perform an act in the shower.

On one occasion, she recalled, her father’s roommate had nearly caught them, having walked into her bedroom just after an assault. McCrea told the roommate he was tucking her in, but “he never tucked me in,” she said. His breath frequently reeked of alcohol and she’d seen him drink “a lot”.

After over three combined hours of testimony, the state passed the witness. Jimmy Stewart, the defense counsel, rehashed her story with the one she’d told Hope House forensic interviewer Melody Jeter on Sept. 27, 2013. There were several inconsistencies.

Often, the girl had difficulty pinpointing approximate dates, and sometimes, she confused the method of assault during specific incidents with others she had talked about previously. She denied writing two journal entries her parents had testified to discovering on the previous day and didn’t believe her mother had ever lived at the trailer after she got out of prison, a fact several adult members of the household had confirmed in Tuesday’s testimony.

While there were variances in the stories, many of the accounts remained partially intact, such as where she had been touched and with what body part. As its final witness, the state called Yvonne Garcia, sole proprietor of the West Texas Counseling Association.

Garcia told the jury of the psychological effects of sexual abuse, relaying that individuals can suffer various behavioral and social disorders and that their memory of events can become hazy.

“Over time, the peripheral details of abuse do become blurred…” Garcia said. “Typically, the core trauma remains consistent.”

After brief cross-examination, the state rested its case at 4 p.m.

The Defense

As its first witness, the defense called a 24-year-old ex-girlfriend of McCrea’s who had dated him for approximately six months including the summer of 2012.

The Grape Creek native had visited McCrea out at the child’s father’s trailer two to three times that summer and stated that he seemed to have a good relationship with children. She told the jury that only once on those few visits was she ever uncomfortable, and that at a pool party when the victim’s father had allegedly attempted to untie her swim suit top. She didn’t know why McCrea had dumped her after a few months.

Following his ex-girlfriend’s testimony, McCrea himself took the stand and vehemently denied all of the allegations against him. According to McCrea, he had never even lived at the house, but had rather stayed the night two to three times per week—usually on weekends—to hang out and drink beer with the girl’s father, a close friend.

He admitted to having “a drinking problem,” but maintained he never drank near the 30-odd beers in night the child’s father had testified to, and certainly not morning, evening and night. He conceded the relationship with the girl’s mother, but said that relationship had not affected his frequency of visits or overnight stays.

When the pair were caught in a romantic display in the trailer’s living room, however, he was kicked out and went to his parents’ house, only to return the following day and take up residence in the child’s father’s driveway. The mother, he said, had been permitted to stay, but desperately wanted him there with her. The two slept in her Blazer parked in the drive until they found a house, McCrea said.

As Best continued cross-examination, he enquired about McCrea’s use of the double-wide’s address when he worked at Mosaic, as well as his use of that same address when McCrea received a traffic citation in June 2009. He denied both.

Best then went through the defendant’s resume, asking if he’d taken his most recent job in the Mr. Gatti’s game room in order to be around children. The defendant said no. Best further pressed McCrea on why he’d failed to mention a job he’d held trucking students from school to a daycare for six months; McCrea didn’t know.

As the prosecutor set the stage for impeachment—asking if the defendant had ever had any inappropriate relationships with minors—Stewart objected and the jury was sent out. Some discussion ensued with Judge Walther on whether Best could use a written statement the defendant had provided Sergeant Investigator Martha Ibarra—presumed to say something to that tune—but that statement had not been entered into evidence.

The state showed its cards: Sometime in the course of the trial Wednesday, two teenagers had contacted the District Attorney’s Office reporting improper relationships with McCrea at a point when his age would have made such relations illegal.

According to John Best, a 16-year-old had come forward to claim that she had had sex with McCrea, and a 15-year-old reported that he had sent her pictures of his penis. McCrea is 33. As of 5 p.m. Wednesday, neither Best nor assisting state’s attorney Meagan White had had the opportunity to interview either witness and requested to delay resting and closing their case until Thursday morning. Judge Walther obliged.

The trial is set to resume Thursday at 9 a.m. If convicted, McCrea could face 25 to 99 years in prison. He lost his job in the Mr. Gatti’s game room on day two of the trial.