Post by WaTcHeR on May 23, 2006 9:38:21 GMT -5
Officer Danny Vaught
05/23/2006 - FULTON - She said she was 11 the first time her dad, a former Fulton police officer, took her from her bed at night and placed her on his lap to watch a pornographic movie.
The girl, now 15 and living in foster care, testified on videotape yesterday in Callaway County Circuit Court that the midnight rendezvous with Danny Vaught was only the first of many sexual encounters with him over the next two years.
With each incident, she said, her dad became increasingly demanding. He began touching her sexually and pressuring her to have sex with him. By the time she was 13, she said, her dad was leaving her typed stories at night about fathers having sex with their daughters.
"He told me that someday we would have sex," she said. "He said it would feel good. He said once we started doing it, it would take stress off me."
A Callaway County jury began hearing testimony yesterday in the case against Vaught, 38, of Holts Summit. The burly former cop and reserve deputy sheriff is charged with six counts of first-degree child molestation, three counts of first-degree attempted statutory rape and one count felony tampering with physical evidence.
In a separate case, his wife, Dena Vaught, 34, is charged with one count of felony tampering with physical evidence. She is accused of helping her husband manipulate their daughter and force her to recant her allegations.
The couple has three other children: two sons, ages 17 and 13, and a 10-year-old daughter.
In his opening statement yesterday, defense attorney Clifford Cornell of Jefferson City described the Vaught daughter as a rebellious teenager who fabricated the abuse story because she was upset with her father for spanking her. He said she has recanted her allegations several times since the charges were filed against his client.
"She said she had lied and didn’t want her dad to go to jail for something he didn’t do," Cornell said.
Special prosecutor Richard Hicks said in his opening statement that the alleged victim was in fifth grade when her father began taking a special interest in her. He commented about her weight and wardrobe. Hicks said that during the summer before sixth grade, the girl’s mother returned to work as a nurse working 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. three or four nights a week.
That’s when Vaught began visiting his daughter’s bedroom, said Hicks, who also is an assistant prosecutor in Boone County.
Eventually, Vaught began confronting his daughter after she was done showering, Hicks said. He would place her on his bed, lock the door and begin touching her breasts, inner thighs and vaginal area, he said. Sometimes, there would be a pornographic moving playing; other times, just music.
The daughter testified that eventually her dad began undressing, too, and getting on top of her on the bed and trying to have sex with her.
"He got on top of me and held my hands over my head," she said. "I could see him, eye to eye. … I asked him why he was doing this to me."
Hick said that at one point, the daughter told her mother what was going on and asked for help.
Instead of talking to her daughter privately about the situation, Hicks said, the mother confronted the girl in front of her dad.
She "refused to say anything because her dad had threatened her the night before," Hicks said.
In December 2003, the daughter transcribed in a notebook one of the incest stories from her dad, took it to school and showed a friend, Hicks said. The friend encouraged her to tell a counselor, but the daughter refused, saying her father had told her he would go to jail and she and her brothers and sister would go to foster care if she told, Hicks said.
"She shredded" the story "and threw it away," he said.
However, the daughter later spoke to the counselor that day and the shredded note was retrieved and put back together, Hicks said.
From there, Hicks said, the secrets began to unravel, and the daughter was taken out of the home and placed in foster care.
Twice she threatened to kill herself and twice she was placed at Mid-Missouri Mental Health Center, where she came under increasing pressure from her parents to recant her story, Hicks said.
Once she received a handwritten note inside the removable cover of a devotional book instructing her to recant her statement.
Hicks said the note gave her advice. " ‘Tell them the allegations are false,’ " he said. "Not once did her father say, ‘Just tell them the truth.’ "