Sheriff Leads Investigation into Abused Teen Girl Who Was Almost Silenced

 

GRAPE CREEK, TX – The Tom Green County Sheriff's Office has made three arrests in the past month in a case involving continuous sexual abuse of a child under 14 years old.

In order to hide the identity of the victim, names have been changed.

On March 22, the Tom Green County Sheriff's Office received a call from a grandmother concerning her granddaughter who had cried out to her for help because her brother, Marcus, was sexually abusing her. The San Angelo Child Advocacy Center met with the granddaughter on April 9 and learned that she had been sexually abused since August of 2014 when she was only 11 years old, the arrest affidavits state.

The first incident happened on a backyard trampoline where the victim says Marcus touched her all over and made her feel "gross." While on the trampoline, the victim told Sheriff's Office detectives that he touched her groin. When Marcus was asked by deputies about the trampoline incident, he said the two were just wrestling and engaging in horseplay.

After this incident, the granddaughter tried to tell her mother and father about what Marcus did. Her parents didn't believe her and proceeded to yell at her. A member of the family told sheriff's detectives that, "we just kinda put it back, because I don't think they believed her."

According to the affidavit, when the granddaughter was between the ages of 12 and 13, she was sexually abused 20 to 30 times. When the victim was in between the ages of 13 and 14 she was abused 15 to 20 times. When the victim was in between the ages of 14 and 15 she was sexually abused 20 to 30 times. From the start of the sexual abuse incidents, Marcus was between 17 and 18 years old. By the end of the cycles of abuse, he was a grown man, between the ages of 19 to 20.

According to the affidavit, on one occasion, the victim was at the grandmother's house and Marcus was there as well. Marcus had sex multiple times with the granddaughter, once in the shed in the back, another time in between two cars, and she told her grandmother that other times Marcus forced her to have intercourse in her parents'  bedroom.

Marcus told deputies that the only thing sexual in nature that they had done was to play "Truth or Dare" when he saw the victim naked in front of him.

Both parents were arrested and booked into the Tom Green County Jail for abandonment/endangering a child in imminent danger that results in bodily injury. Marcus was also arrested and charged with continuous sexual abuse of a child under the age of 14.

The arrests and charges were a result of a grandmother who helped her granddaughter tell her story to authorities, the facilitation of the Hope House and CAC in San Angelo, and a Sheriff's Office willing to investigate these difficult cases.

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