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SUGARLOAF TWP. — Township police and Luzerne County detectives arrested a man from Cumberland County on charges he sexually assaulted a boy for several years.
Donald Brant Copeland, 45, of Carlisle, was charged with felony counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and corruption of minors after a man claimed he was assaulted beginning when he was 10 or 11 years old, according to court records.
Police launched an investigation Feb. 2 when the man reported the alleged lewd acts.
According to the criminal complaint:
The man told police Copeland performed oral sex on him multiple times in Sugarloaf Township, Hazleton and Wilkes-Barre beginning in 2008 when he was 10 or 11 years old and continued until he turned 17 and started dating a girl.
He claimed Copeland would pull down his pants and perform the lewd acts, mostly while he was in a bedroom playing video games.
On a shopping trip at the Wyoming Valley Mall, Copeland separated the man from others by driving him to another store in the Arena Hub Plaza. On the drive, he claimed Copeland placed his hands down his pants and molested him, the complaint says.
Investigators in the complaint say Copeland was asked by the man during a Feb. 8 recorded phone call why he performed lewd acts on him when he was younger. Copeland explained he had no reason and “I never wanted to do anything that was not good for you,” the complaint says.
Copeland, during the recorded phone call, said he projected things in his brain and it was something he “enjoyed” and believed he was doing no harm to the man, according to the complaint.
Copeland asked the man, the complaint says, if he had intentions of telling anyone else saying it will “blow up” and would impact a lot more people than just him.
Copeland was arraigned by District Judge Daniel O’Donnell in Butler Township and jailed at the county correctional facility for lack of $100,000 bail.