Jury gives man 50 years for sex abuse

Defendant testifies he's innocent of assaulting girl for nearly 10 years

NEW BOSTON, Texas-A Bowie County jury sentenced a man Thursday afternoon to 50 years in prison for sexually abusing his former girlfriend's daughter for nearly a decade.

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Slim and Kristen Black

Roy Dean Brown, 51, will be 101 before he is eligible for release, Assistant District Attorney Kelley Crisp said.

Brown repeatedly denied his guilt during testimony late Thursday morning. A jury of nine women and six men rejected his claims of innocence Thursday afternoon and found Brown guilty of the continuous sexual abuse of a child under 14 and of second-degree sexual assault. Late Thursday afternoon, after hearing testimony and arguments on the punishment Brown should receive, the jury handed down sentences of 50 and 20 years, which 102nd District Judge Bobby Lockhart ordered will run concurrently.

During testimony during the state's case Wednesday, the victim, now 20, testified she was abused by Brown beginning when she was 5 or 6 until she was 14. The girl said Brown required her to engage in sexual activity to "earn" things like fast food, clothing and cellphones. Brown was the live-in boyfriend of the victim's mother from 1998 until the girl's outcry on Aug. 7, 2010, witnesses testified.

Both the prosecutors on Brown's case spoke of his years-long hold on his victim.

"We've heard a lot of talk about earning it. What has Roy Dean Brown earned?" asked Assistant District Attorney Lauren Richards of the jury in her closing remarks. "(The victim) talks about (the sexual abuse) like it was a chore. Like our or your children would talk about emptying the dishwashwer or folding towels to earn their allowance."

The victim revealed the abuse to two cousins at a family gathering on Aug. 7, 2010. The cousins told adult family members, who then took the allegations to police.

"Roy Dean Brown should have been this victim's father figure, but instead of instruction and guidance, he spent a decade raping and abusing her, such that he serves every day of his 50-year sentence. The statute under which he was sentenced forecloses the possibility of parole, rendering the jury's verdict an effective life sentence," Crisp said. "This defendant's time of harming the most vulnerable in our society has come to an end."

In the week after the girl's outcry, members of the New Boston Police Department asked the girl's mother to collect her bedding. DNA testing on the linens revealed a mixture of DNA from the victim and Brown's sperm, an analyst from the Texas Department of Public Safety Crime Lab testified.

Brown's lawyer, Carl Franklin of Shreveport, La., argued that the evidence was improperly collected and sloppily handled, rendering the testing results meaningless. Crisp and Richards argued that the findings amount to incontrovertible proof of Brown's guilt.

Brown, who has no prior criminal record, is not eligible for parole under Texas law on the continuous abuse charge. Brown will be 52 on Saturday. He will receive five days of jail credit for the time he spent in custody before making bail in 2011.

 

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