Caln man gets long jail time for abusing daughters

A Caln man who authorities say sexually molested and assaulted his two daughters and a third child he cared for has been sentenced to a long term in state prison for what a prosecutor called a case of “sexual exploitation.”

“As these victims have matured, they have learned that the person they loved and trusted violated them,” said Assistant District Attorney Megan King, of the D.A.’s Child Abuse Unit, in a sentencing memorandum filed with Common Pleas Judge Phyllis Streitel, who on Wednesday sentenced the man to 55 to 110 years behind bars. All of the victims were under 10 year old when the assaults occurred.

“All three are in therapy trying to comprehend the sexual exploitation that they suffered at the hands of their own father, or father figure,” King wrote while asking Streitel for a sentence of 60 to 120 years in prison. “This abuse manipulated and twisted a child’s natural sense of trust and love. When the very person who is supposed to protect and guide a child ends up exploiting his victim for his own pleasure, there is a true corruption of parental love.”

The 35-year-old unemployed man, who lived in the Downingtown area of the township at the time of the incidents and his arrest, did not address the court before sentencing. His attorney, Alexander Silow of West Chester, told Streitel that his client plans to appeal his conviction.

The Daily Local News is withholding the man’s name so as to protect the identity of his three victims.

In January, the man pleaded guilty to two counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, seven counts of indecent assault of a child under 13, and additional counts of corruption of minors, and disseminating obscene and other sexual materials to children. The plea came just as his trial on those charges was scheduled to begin, and after the girls had all testified in court proceedings about what happened to them.

But in what King said was an obvious sign that the man lacked remorse for his crimes, three months after he pleaded guilty he came back to court and demanded that he be allowed to withdraw his plea. He complained about the legal services given by his thenattorney, Assistant Public Defender Kelly Jurs, and claimed that a recording of the interview he gave to police in the case – in which he acknowledged having indecent contact with all three girls, but blamed them for “being sexual” and for watching pornography – had been altered.

In August, after an evidentiary hearing at which the lead investigators, Caln Sgt. Christine Cusick and Chester County Detective Gerald Davis, testified as to the veracity of the recording, Streitel formally rejected the man’s attempt to withdraw his plea, setting the stage for Wednesday’s sentencing.

“We are pleased that Judge Streitel recognized the severity of the case. This sentence ensures that the defendant can never hurt another child,” King said Thursday. “While nothing can erase the pain these innocent children endured, hopefully this sentence will help bring them closure so that the healing process can continue.”

The case against the man began in April 2016, when Cusick was contacted about a report of alleged child abuse through Childline, the state’s abuse hotline. She subsequently interviewed, along with Davis, the three victims - the defendant’s two daughters, ages 9 and 6 at the time, and a third girl, the daughter of a friend, who was then 8.

All three said that they had slept in the same bed as the man when they stayed at his house, and that he had sexually assaulted and molested them at various time, including performing oral sex with them.

When the man was confronted by police he admitted much of the conduct, calling the 8-yearold his “go to” child, saying that one of his daughters would shower with him, and that his other daughter, age 6, had watched pornography.

He was arrested in May 2016 and has been held in Chester County Prison since then on $500,000 bail.

King noted in her memorandum that the man had pleaded guilty to 20 separate counts of sexual offenses with the three girls, none of whom appeared in court for the sentencing.

“He is a proven danger to society,” she wrote. (He) chose victims who were under his care and who were too little to run, too weak to resist, and too young to comprehend what was happening to them.

“Young children are the most vulnerable victims, because they are completely innocent, defenseless, and reliant upon others to care for them,” she said.