Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 16, 1992 TAG: 9201160373
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MONICA DAVEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BEDFORD LENGTH: Medium
MAN FOUND GUILTY OF BATTERY EX-LIBRARY AIDE FACES JAIL FOR ATTACK
A former faculty member at Jefferson Forest High School was convicted Wednesday of sexual battery involving a student at the school.William Douglas Carroll, 35, was sentenced to 12 months in jail and fined $2,500.
It took a Bedford County jury 45 minutes to return the misdemeanor conviction - a lesser offense than the one for which Carroll originally had been indicted. He had been charged with attempted rape, a felony that could have carried a 10-year prison sentence.
Carroll, who had worked as a library aide and study hall monitor, declined to comment as he left the courtroom with his wife.
A student had accused Carroll of pulling her clothes off and pressing against her in a darkened room near the school library last February.
Carroll's attorney, Ed Dawson, offered no defense testimony during the two-day trial. Instead, he pointed out holes and inconsistencies in the 17-year-old student's statements. In his closing statement, Dawson left the jury with many unanswered questions, which he characterized as "glaring discrepancies" in the teen-ager's story.
Why didn't anyone in the nearby cafeteria hear the student, if she was screaming and crying for 15 minutes as she said?
And why didn't she report the attack until more than two months after it occurred?
The student, who had testified tearfully, wept again as Dawson gave his argument.
She sat in the front row of the court clutching hands with other female students - several of whom had offered testimony about Carroll touching them or talking to them about sex.
In his closing argument, Bedford Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Philip Baker tried to offer an explanation for the student's hesitance to file a complaint.
"A 17-year-old with no friends, no associates, with no one to guide her" met Carroll, who "was hunting her," Baker said.
"Educators are entrusted with . . . our future," he said. "He breached that trust in the most insidious way. That's the intimidation factor that goes beyond words."
Baker also scoffed at the explanation Carroll gave to investigators in an interview after he was arrested last August. Though Carroll did not testify, jurors did hear a tape of the interview.
In it, Carroll said that the 17-year-old had come on to him sexually. He rejected her, he told the investigator.
She would approach him at his library post and ask him if he loved her, Carroll said. Other times, he said, she would stand "real close" to him until he had to push her away.
At one point, the student even unbuttoned her pants and asked Carroll to touch her, he said. Carroll said no and sent the student back to class, he said.
Jurors got a firsthand look at the scene of the alleged attack Wednesday afternoon.
As several hundred teen-agers munched on a lunch of pizza and french fries, the jury toured the high school - its cafeteria, library and the room where the student said the incident occurred.
After the trial, Dawson said he was unhappy with the verdict. Though the conviction was for a lesser charge, Dawson said his client had hoped for acquittal.
Dawson may appeal the conviction, he said.
Baker, meanwhile, said he was satisfied with the misdemeanor conviction. "This is among the most difficult kinds of case to try," he said.
When incidents go unreported for several months, investigators have little physical evidence to collect, he said. Then, it comes down to a matter of one person's word against another's.
The student would have preferred to see Carroll spend 10 years in prison, Baker said.
But, he said, she found comfort in the knowledge that someone believed her.