Jury Convicts Man of Sexual Assault

FORT WORTH -- A Mineral Wells man was found guilty of sexually assaulting the 12-year-old daughter of his girlfriend.

The Tarrant County jury deliberated about two hours Wednesday night before convicting Kenyon Cox of two counts of aggravated sexual assault and two counts of indecency with a child.

However, the jury did not return the verdict until Thursday morning because Cox’s attorney had to leave while the jury deliberated Wednesday night.

A punishment hearing for Cox began immediately after the verdict was read in Criminal District Court No. 2. If prosecutors prove that he had prior felony convictions, he faces up to life in prison on each of the four counts.

Of nine counts, jurors were asked to decide two counts of aggravated sexual assault alleged to have occurred June 8, 2007, and two counts of indecency with a child alleged to have occurred May 1, 2007 — all in White Settlement.

Prosecutors Amy Collum and Hugo Martinez told jurors there was no question that Cox repeatedly sexually assaulted the girl, although she failed to tell anyone about it and denied it to Child Protective Services.

Collum reminded jurors that the girl, now 14, and her two siblings had testified that Cox beat them with a paddle, held a gun to their mother’s head, burned her private area with a torch, held a razor to the chest of the youngest girl, beat their puppy to death with a baseball bat and threatened to kill the family if the older girl reported the abuse.

“Is it any wonder that she would not tell when she was living in hell with this guy?” Collum asked. “Wouldn’t you be afraid?”

The children said they and their mother began living with Cox in 2005, shortly after their parents separated. They lived with Cox’s father in Weatherford until the older man became upset at a severe beating Cox gave the girls’ brother, the boy testified.

The family was living in a motel when Cox gave the older girl an alcoholic drink, then exposed himself and made her perform a sex act, she said.

The girl said the sex acts and fondling continued and included attempts by Cox to have sex with her in their White Settlement apartment while her mother was at work and her younger siblings were in another room.

The boy, now 12, said he didn’t see Cox abusing his sister but heard her say “ow!” from the other room. He said Cox treated her sister differently, sometimes giving her presents. The girl said Cox told her that “if you want me to do something for you, you have to do something for me.”

Defense attorney Pia Rodriguez told jurors that Cox might be “the most violent man in the world” but that it doesn’t mean he sexually assaulted the girl.

She reminded jurors that the girl had repeatedly denied being sexually abused when questioned by CPS workers.

Rodriguez contended that the girl and her brother only made the allegations after CPS officials turned them over to their father, who acknowledged disliking Cox.

Collum said Cox’s multiple escape attempts were evidence that “he knew he did it.”

Two years ago, as police and child-abuse investigators knocked on his door, Cox climbed out a bedroom window with his girlfriend’s three children, including the 12-year-old girl he was sexually assaulting.

A week later, Cox fled from a White Settlement detective who was trying to arrest him on a warrant for aggravated sexual assault based on the girl’s allegations, the detective testified.

And last year, the 32-year-old Mineral Wells man eluded police for two days after he cut off his ankle monitor after being bailed out of the Tarrant County Jail by two former inmates who used proceeds from bank robberies, authorities said.

The two men who bailed Cox out of jail, Thomas Jochum and Donald Mark Scott, are serving time for federal bank robbery convictions. Jochum was sentenced to 20 years in prison for two robberies and Scott to more than nine years for one robbery, Collum said.