Posted on 02/04/2023 4:23:30 AM PST by Morgana
WAYNE COUNTY, N.C. — Arguments began Monday in the trial of a former teacher accused of molesting two 11-year-old female students at a Christian school in Wayne County in the mid-1990s.
53-year-old Warren Riley is charged with multiple counts of indecent liberties with a child. On the first day of arguments, one of his alleged victims took the stand to lay out the abuse she claims she suffered.
Riley was arrested in August 2020 and charged with abuse stemming from his time teaching at Faith Christian Academy in Goldsboro.
The trial began with opening statements.
Prosecutors told the jury that Riley groomed the girls over time, singling them out with special attention before escalating his behavior into sexual abuse.
“She’s the one that he has a secret code with,” prosecutor Abbie Ivey said in her opening statement. “A code of, if I clear my throat in a crowd, that means I think you’re pretty.”
“If I rub my eye, that means I love you,” she continued.
Riley’s defense attorneys said their client wasn’t made aware of the allegations for more than 20 years, and has denied them outright.
“It’s our position that once you hear the facts, the actual facts, not the warped facts, that your verdict will be not guilty,” Jackie Houser told the jury.
On Monday afternoon. one of the alleged victims took the stand.
Now a woman in her late 30s, she described how in sixth grade Riley initially singled her out as a kind of teacher’s pet, giving her test answers and showing her extra attention in class.
She told the court that as time passed, Riley began holding her back in the classroom while the rest of the students went to recess.
(Excerpt) Read more at wral.com ...
These stories make my soul ache…
Seems like the statute of limitations should prevent this type of case. It also seems unlikely there is any real proof, it is probably all he said she said.
Unless there is real proof I don’t think this should have ever made it into the court system.
It should, but, I think, so they could destroy the Church, they canceled all the time limitations a while ago.
Maybe he did, and maybe he didn’t; but based on the claimed evidence, it would be a not guilty verdict from me.
Only two girls? That makes me suspicious from the get-go. Someome wants me to believe there were only two girls?
I wonder just how screwed up are the lives of of these two women. Are they looking for a scapegoat for bad life choices?
Sadly, lots of men get convicted on nothing more than claims of abuse after decades go by.
Not Joe, yet.
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