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LISBON -- The jury trial for a former East Palestine resident accused of inappropriately touching and raping a young child from 2014 to 2016 started Tuesday, with a jury of five women and seven men selected to decide the case.
David Jones, 35, whose address was listed as Ypsilanti, Mich., was indicted last year by the Columbiana County Grand Jury with three counts of rape, a first-degree felony, one count of sexual battery, a second-degree felony, and one count of gross sexual imposition, a third-degree felony.
All of the alleged sexual assaults involve the same female child victim starting when she was 4 years old, beginning Jan. 1, 2014 to Dec. 31, 2016, a trauma prosecutors said she first disclosed when she was just 10 years old.
Jones, who's jailed under a $100,000 cash or surety bond, appeared in street clothes in Columbiana County Common Pleas Court as his attorney, Lawrence Stacey II, and county Assistant Prosecutors Tammie Riley Jones and Steve Yacovone conducted jury selection all morning. Judge Megan Bickerton is overseeing the trial.
Tammie Riley Jones delivered her opening statement in the afternoon, describing what happened to the child as the worst form of betrayal, actions that haunt a child, that cause trauma, and can affect each victim differently. She told the jury that a child victim of sexual assault doesn't alway tell what happened right away; they may not realize that it's wrong, they may think something worse will happen if they tell.
She told the jury they would hear from medical experts who will explain that a lack of physical evidence findings does not mean the sexual assault did not occur.
She said this case is about multiple instances of child sexual assault, with rape and sexual battery involving sexual conduct and gross sexual imposition involving touching. She went into detail about the relationship between the defendant and the child and about the timeline and where the incidents occurred and where the child was when she first told what happened.
Tammie Riley Jones described in disturbing detail what the child said the defendant allegedly did to her, details about "things you wouldn't be able to describe unless you experienced them and things that no child should know about."
She also said the defendant threatened to kill her if she told anybody.
When Stacey addressed the jury, he pointed out what he said the facts will show, including that what the child said when she spoke to a counselor was different than what she said eight days ago during a hearing. During those sessions with a counselor, she described certain acts, but when she spoke recently, she said those acts didn't occur.
He talked to the jury about the victim's nightmare about what happened, questioning "is the nightmare a memory or a nightmare?"
He also questioned the address in East Palestine where the events occurred and noted that the defendant had been evicted from that house during part of the timeframe when the alleged incidents happened.
"I think that's rather important," he said.
In talking about what the child testified to before a grand jury and what she said eight days ago at a hearing, Stacey accused the victim of perjury.
"The bottom line is that she lied. Did she lie then or lie now?" he said.
Witness testimony began after opening statements, with the trial expected to continue today.
mgreier@mojonews.com