News

November 20, 2009

Local man ‘guilty’ of child rape

A Luzerne County jury returns its verdict in a second trial of Jerome Windley. He faces March sentencing.

By Sheena Delazio sdelazio@timesleader.com
Staff Writer
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WILKES-BARRE – A Kingston man was found guilty Thursday of raping a 12-year-old girl last August.

Jerome Windley, 25, who was on trial for the second time facing charges of rape of a child and statutory sexual assault, was found guilty after a jury deliberated for more than two hours.

At Windley’s first trial in June, a jury found him guilty of charges of corruption of minors, but was hung on the rape and sexual assault charges, as well as an unlawful contact with minors charge that prosecutors dropped.

Windley will be sentenced March 4, 2010. He will be evaluated to determine if he must apply for Megan’s Law as a registered sexual offender.

A jury of nine men and five women was selected Monday.

In the two-day trial, which was postponed for two days because of court scheduling conflicts, a now 13-year-old girl testified she was in a bedroom in Windley’s home with her female cousin, Windley and another man.

Windley told everyone to leave the room but her, she testified, when he forced her to remove her clothes, held her down and raped her.

“He had sex with me and I didn’t want to,” the girl testified Monday about the August 2008 incident. “I told him to stop and I was crying, and he said to give him five minutes.”

Luzerne County Assistant District Attorney Maureen Collins said in her opening statement that Windley called the girl cute and wanted to know if she would hang out with him later that day when they first met.

Windley’s attorney, Charles Ross, said in his argument that the incident wasn’t reported until two months after it allegedly happened and a doctor who examined the girl found no vaginal damage.

“That means it didn’t happen,” Ross said.

According to court records, on Oct. 18, the girl’s mother reported a sexual assault involving her daughter. Through an investigation conducted by the Kingston Police Department and county detectives, it was learned that in August, the girl, her female cousin and two males were at a home on Main Street in Kingston.

That’s when Windley asked to be alone with the girl, police said. The girl told police that the man, then only identified as Pee Wee, forced her to take off her clothes and have sexual intercourse.

Sheena Delazio, a Times Leader staff writer, may be reached at 829-7235.

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