Jury hangs in trial of ex-youth worker
From stand, he denies abuse claims
The first-degree sexual-assault trial of a former Youth Home worker accused of abusing a 15-year-old boy ended in mistrial on Wednesday after two days with a Pulaski County jury favoring acquittal but unable to reach the required unanimous verdict.
Gregory Dwayne Simmons, who told jurors he’d dedicated his life to working with troubled children, denied wrongdoing. No physical evidence tied the 64-year-old widowed father of two to the Class A felony charge, which carries up to 30 years in prison.
Simmons had never been in trouble before the 15-yearold boy in foster care at the 57-year-old facility accused him in May 2020, but jurors also heard from a 46-yearold Little Rock man, a former family friend, who testified that Simmons had done the same thing to him in 1995 but police did not follow through with an investigation.
The eight men and four women deliberated about 2½ hours before reporting to Circuit Judge Leon Johnson that they were deadlocked 11-1 for innocence, although jurors had indicated they were stuck after about 90 minutes.
In closing arguments, defense attorney Bill James said prosecutors had no proof beyond the word of a troubled teenager that Simmons, who had been an overnight worker at the home, had done anything wrong.
“They don’t have anything proving these allegations … other than this young man and a [police] report from 30 years ago,” he said. “They created accusations … but they’ve got no evidence. Ask [prosecutors], ‘Where is the proof? Where is the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt?’ They have failed to prove Mr. Simmons did this.”
James said the story told by the teenage accuser, now 18, defied common sense with a claim that Simmons had subjected him to oral sex and sodomy during an overnight encounter at the facility after weeks of sexual innuendo and making him show himself while he was naked during showers.
James accused the teen of pursuing a vendetta against Simmons because Simmons had curtailed special — and unapproved — access to latenight videogames and TV. The defense attorney further suggested that the teen might have thought Simmons was responsible for informing the home operators about accusations against him of inappropriate interaction with another child at the facility.
Simmons testified for about 35 minutes Wednesday. Questioned by defense attorney Hayley Ferguson, Simmons wiped his eyes as he denied the molestation accusations, telling jurors he didn’t know that the 44-year-old man had ever gone to police and that he was puzzled why the man would come forward now.
A five-year Youth Home employee, Simmons said he had broken the rules to give his accuser — and others at the eight-boy living facility — unauthorized overnight access to video games and television. Simmons said he’d let them play video games and watch TV when the boys couldn’t sleep at night to show them some kindness out of consideration for all of the trauma and abuse the children had suffered to end up in foster care.
“When a kid needs extra attention … that’s when I break the rules,” he testified, describing how he had been a special-ed teacher’s aide for 18 years before joining Youth Home. “Those kids have been traumatized and been through a lot … I felt like they needed attention.”
Simmons said he had immediately cut off the accuser’s video-game the night before the teen went to authorities because the teen had broken a safety rule — chatting with outsiders through the video game — that he said he couldn’t ignore because of the possibility that the communication could reach potential assailants who could come to the 52-acre campus at Colonel Glenn Road and Lockert Lane.
Prosecutors Whitney Ohlhausen and Beth Kanopsic told jurors that Simmons was a master manipulator who preyed on boys, pointing out how similar the testimony of Simmons’ accusers was despite them being strangers and separated by 25 years.
Both were troubled teens who came under his influence when he posed as a mentor who took special interest in them. Both described how Simmons had gone from giving them gifts and showing them special favors to sexual innuendo to fondling before culminating in sex acts, the prosecutors said.
Key evidence was a surveillance video that showed Simmons escorting the boy to the TV/video-game room, Ohlhausen said in her closing statements. When the boy went to authorities, he had no idea that the video existed to show he and Simmons had been together at all that night, Ohlhausen said.
“He’s told the same story for three years,” she said. “He had no way of knowing there’s video backing up the time-frame for when this happened.”
Simmons preys on boys but his accusers have exposed him and how he operates, she said.
“The defendant is good at manipulating people. He had a motive and a plan,” Ohlhausen said, saying that Simmons deliberately targeted troubled boys who would not be believed. “He chose to work with kids — and not just any kids — but traumatized kids. He took a job at Youth Home to get access to these kids.”