A 20-year-old Wisconsin man thought he wouldn’t get caught for abusing his stepsister, so he continued the abuse for six years.
According to prosecutors, the unidentified man, who began abusing his stepsister when she was 9 and he was 13, abused her because he didn’t think anyone would find out. The inconsistencies in her story and the lack of physical evidence caused jurors to be skeptical of her accusations.
When the teenage girl initially reached out for help and social workers became involved, according to the Huffington Post, she was sent to live with her grandfather in Minnesota. Upon returning to Wisconsin, she was home-schooled, starved, and suffered from continued abuse while living in an unfinished basement with boarded up windows at the behest of her father and stepmother. In early 2012, she ran away from home and was treated at a hospital, where she informed authorities of her living conditions. She was barefoot, severely malnourished, and weighed 68 pounds. Both guardians were convicted of child abuse.
Jurors convicted the stepbrother of first-degree sexual assault of a child, second-degree sexual assault of a child, and child abuse. He pleaded no contest to sexual assault in a separate 2011 case. And is facing sexual assault charges in another case involving a third girl.
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