Kenosha police officer charged with sexual assault on duty
A Kenosha police officer has been accused of sexually assaulting an intoxicated woman at a hospital while she was in his custody for an OWI investigation.
Joshua T. Sylvester, 27, who joined the Kenosha Police Department just over a year ago, made his first court appearance Tuesday after being charged with two felonies: second-degree sexual assault by a law enforcement officer and misconduct in public office, exposing him to more than 40 years in prison if convicted.
The criminal complaint filed in Kenosha County Circuit Court said Sylvester was alone in a room with the victim for more than two hours and his actions were plainly visible on his body camera.
It was not until 11 months ago that Kenosha police officers began wearing body cameras. The move to outfit officers with the technology received added urgency after the shooting of Jacob Blake in August 2020.
The Kenosha Police Department did not immediately return a request for an interview Tuesday afternoon. The sexual assault investigation was performed by the Kenosha County Sheriff’s Department.
Sylvester is in custody with cash bail set at $15,000, according to online court records.
According to the criminal complaint: In the early morning of Aug. 18, Sylvester responded to the 9600 block of 64th Street in Kenosha, where a car crashed into a tree. The driver, a 34year-old woman, later told police she had been drinking at her home earlier that night before driving to a bar, where she blacked out.
After being taken to a hospital, the woman refused a blood draw and a CT scan, so the hospital staff decided she would have to stay at the facility for four hours under observation. She was then left in a room with Sylvester for at least two hours wearing only a hospital gown.
During that time, she said, Sylvester sexually assaulted her, used her phone to send himself previously taken nude photos of the woman and then deleted the text message thread from her phone.
After being released from the county jail about eight hours later, the woman did find a record of the text messages on her iPad but deleted them because she felt disgusted and embarrassed. She did not tell anyone about the interaction until the evening of Aug. 18. A friend of hers convinced her to report it the next day.
After hearing the woman’s account, detectives with the Sheriff’s Department reviewed Sylvester’s body camera footage and found it supported all her allegations against Sylvester.
On Aug. 22, investigators searched Sylvester’s Kenosha home and took him into custody. He initially denied sending himself nude photos of the woman but admitted to it after detectives told him they watched his body camera footage and were planning to search his phone.
He continued to deny sexually assaulting the woman, however, and said he only tried to stop her from touching herself.