Jury delivers split verdict in sexual abuse case

Apr. 24—Jurors deliberated three hours Wednesday before returning verdicts convicting Aarron Bittick of raping a 13-year-old girl, but not of sodomizing her.

Bittick faced both statutory rape and statutory sodomy charges in the three-day trial before Judge David Mouton in Jasper County Circuit Court. The eight female and four male jurors who deliberated the case decided prosecutors had proven that the 38-year-old Carthage man raped the girl but lacked sufficient evidence on the sodomy count.

The girl, who is now 18, testified that Bittick sexually abused her for more than six years beginning when she was 7 years old, raping and sodomizing her numerous times.

The charges focused on just two alleged acts committed between September 2018 and May 2019 when the girl turned 14. She did not disclose the abuse until September 2019, and the defense maintained that she did so because she had developed an interest in a boy and wanted out from under the strict control of the defendant with regard to her dating.

Assistant Prosecutor Taylor Haas told the jury during closing arguments that the case boiled down to the believability of the victim, as child sexual abuse trials often do.

He said her interest in a boyfriend was not a motive to lie. That interest had run its course four years ago, Haas said. And even if it provided some motive at the time, it no longer does, and her accounts of Bittick's abuse — to police, to a Children's Center interviewer and in court testimony — have remained consistent over time, he said.

Rather than a motive to lie, the ex-boyfriend actually proved to be the key to the abuse finally coming to light. She had made some cryptic comments to him about Bittick that troubled him and he took his concern to an instructor at their school who alerted the administration and police were called in.

"What happened is an accidental disclosure because she was afraid to tell anyone," Haas said.

He called jurors' attention to the various ways in which the defendant's ex-wife had corroborated details in the woman's testimony. She had told of his fascination with pornography, his aggressive manner in bed, an occasion when she caught him "spooning" with the victim in his boxer shorts, and the tick bite on his groin that both women knew about.

Defense attorney Tracey Martin argued that there was reason to believe the two women may have "colluded" on their accounts out of a common hatred of Bittick. She told jurors her client's defense in the face of the girl's allegation has never wavered over time.

"Raising teenagers is difficult, and they don't always tell the truth," Martin said in her closing argument.

The young woman acknowledged in court that she had an interest in her boyfriend at the time and had objections to Bittick's rules regarding her dress, her style and the proper age for dating. Contrary to what Haas maintained, the girl's story has changed some each time she has told it since the initial disclosure, becoming more detail with every telling, Martin said.

Haas also told jurors the victim's increasing recall of details was normal for those who suffer child sexual abuse as they undergo therapy and recover repressed memories.

Martin emphasized in her closing argument the lie the victim admitted in court that she told in her initial interview at the Children's Center regarding sexual abuse at the hands of a second man.

"That is such an important interview and she lied," Martin said, pointing out that it took her several years to come clean about that lie.

But Assistant Prosecutor Nate Dally called attention during his rebuttal of the defense to the circumstances on the occasion when she first told that lie. The defendant was once again forcing sexual intercourse on her and she made up the lie to try to get him to understand what he was doing was wrong and stop hurting her.

Dally asked the woman on redirect examination the second day of the trial if she recalled what she told him when he asked her pretrial if her allegations were true and was she willing to go through the ordeal of having her account questioned at trial.

"It is very true, and I want to go through with it," she had responded.

Just the facts Aarron Bittick waived jury sentencing pretrial and will be sentenced July 22 by Judge David Mouton, who revoked his bond following the reading of the verdicts Wednesday. Bittick faces a minimum of 10 years or up to life in prison for the statutory rape of the victim when she was 13 years old.

Jeff Lehr is a reporter for The Joplin Globe.