Deputy charged with molesting girl for years

A Broward County jail deputy was arrested at work and charged with sexually battering a little girl nearly 20 years ago.

The victim, now a 29-year-old woman, told investigators Verol Cowans repeatedly molested, raped and assaulted her from the time she was 7 until she was 11, an arrest report said.

Cowans, 58, went before a Palm Beach County judge Monday morning on four counts of sexual battery on a victim under 12 years old. He is being held without bond in the Palm Beach County Main Detention Center in West Palm Beach, records show.

Cowans, of Port St. Lucie, first hired by the Broward Sheriff’s Office in 2005, has been suspended without pay, a spokeswoman for the agency said.

The victim, now a wife and a mother living in Orlando, told investigators with the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office that the molestations at first happened two or three times a week when Cowans would drive her to and from school, a report said. “Don’t tell anyone. Keep it between us,” Cowans would warn the little girl, his arrest report said.

The abuse intensified to other sex acts and watching pornography, which Cowans told the girl was instructional — “She could watch and see what the girl does,” according to the report.

On Feb. 23, the woman placed a controlled call to Cowans, telling him of the trauma, shame and flashbacks he had harnessed her adulthood with.

During the 50-minute conversation, which investigators listened in on, the woman told Cowans she was getting closer to God and working on forgiving him. She needed to “move forward and get to a happy place in her life,” the report said. Hired in February 2005 as a detention deputy, Cowans retired for personal reasons from the Broward Sheriff ’s Office in June 2011. He was rehired on Feb. 13, 2013.

Cowans