WEST CHESTER — A Chester County Common Pleas Court jury on Monday began hearing the case of a Philadelphia man accused of sexually assaulting his young son over several months, including when he visited the child’s mother in Parkesburg.
The jury was chosen in Judge Analisa Sondergaard’s court after the judge agreed that the prosecution in the case could use a taped interview with the then 7-year-old boy in which he described what his father had done to him while they were watching a movie in bed together.
The boy, in describing what had happened to Chester County Detective Gerald Davis Jr. of the D.A.’s Child Abuse Unit said that his father had put his “pee pee” in his mouth and behind in July 2021.
The defendant’s name is being withheld to shield the young boy’s identity, who is expected to testify during the four-day trial at the Chester County Justice Center. MediaNews Group does not identify the names of the victims of alleged sexual assaults.
The man, who is 59 and was arrested by Parkesburg police in November 2021, is charged with rape of a child, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, indecent assault of a child under 13, unlawful contact with a minor, and corruption of a minor. He has been held in Chester County Prison on bail since his arrest.
According to an arrest affidavit filed by then-Sgt. Richard Moran of the Parkesburg police, he spoke with the boy’s mother in August 2021 after she reported that her son had disclosed being sexually assaulted by his father earlier in the summer.
She said that when the man visited on July 3, 2021, he initially said he wanted to sleep in the same bed as the child, but that she forbade him from doing so. Instead, he slept in her bed but the two did not talk.
The next morning, the man went into her room with the boy and began watching a movie that the woman said was inappropriate for a child his age. She left the room, but when she returned she found the two were again watching the movie. She again objected, and the man threw the television remote control at her, shouting, “What are you trying to accuse me of?”
She left and then returned, and this time found her son completely under the bedcovers, lying with his head towards the man’s waist. The man had rewound the movie to the scene the boy’s mother felt was inappropriate.
It was not until several days later that the mother, in questioning her son about what happened, said she learned what the boy’s father had allegedly done. She called the police.
After hearing about Davis’s forensic interview with the boy, Sondergaard ruled that the circumstances fit the contours of the state’s “tender years” exception to the hearsay rule, meaning that the jury could view it as well as hear from the boy himself. The man’s attorneys, Assistant Public Defenders Stewart Paintin and Kelly Jurs, had contended that DAs had asked leading questions that would make what the child said happened unreliable.
First Assistant District Attorney Erin O’Brien is prosecuting the case.
The case involves allegations of assault between March 2020 and July 2021, in both Parkesburg and Upper Merion. It is unclear what the allegations are stemming from the Upper Merion instances.
The trial is expected to end on Thursday.
To contact staff writer Michael P. Rellahan call 610-696-1544.
