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	Jury Convicts Man in Student's Sexual Abuse Case By Cheryl Caswell Daily Mail January 29, 2009 http://www.dailymail.com/News/200901280607 CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A jury found a Chesapeake man guilty on three of seven counts of sexually abusing a teenage girl at his church. Timothy C. Edmonds, 37, had been charged with sexual abuse by a custodian or a person in a position of trust. His alleged victim was a 16-year-old student who was enrolled at a private school run by Chesapeake Apostolic Church. Edmond's father-in-law is pastor there and his mother-in-law is principal of the church school. Jurors began deliberating the case Wednesday afternoon and reached a verdict after several hours. Edmonds was taken later to South Central Regional Jail. Edmonds' court-appointed defense attorney, John Sullivan, said Wednesday night he plans to appeal the verdict. Edmonds took the witness stand earlier Wednesday and told a jury he was never alone with the girl. Sullivan asked him, "Have you ever had any sexual contact with (the alleged victim)?" "No," Edmonds said. "Did you ever arrange to be alone with her?" Sullivan asked. "No," said the defendant. Edmonds' wife, Karen Edmonds, had also testified in his trial. She said she and her husband had sex several times in a house near Chesapeake Apostolic Church -- one of the locations where Edmonds allegedly took the teenager. Karen Edmonds said that after she and her husband had sexual relations, she used a pair of her pantyhose to clean herself. Her husband gave similar testimony, and Sullivan told the jury that those were the hose tested at a state crime lab and found to contain Edmonds' semen and DNA. Edmonds contends the girl, a special education student, made up the stories of sexual abuse. Sullivan tried to show that police botched the investigation and obtained the hose from a search of the house and not from the girl, as she and her mother testified. The pantyhose were at the crux of the three-day trial of Edmonds, who has been characterized as a former youth pastor who was often present in the one-classroom school and who sometimes had a leadership role in church services. The teenage girl told the jury Edmonds twice led her to a basement room at the church and rubbed himself against her sexually. She said he took her twice to the nearby house, and once asked her to put on pantyhose and pose for explicit photographs. In her closing argument, Assistant Prosecutor Michelle Drummond pulled the pantyhose from an envelope and briefly held them up. "One thing that is solid -- the DNA on those pantyhose," she said. "I submit to you, these were not Karen Edmonds' pantyhose." Drummond referred to the fact that Edmonds is much larger than the alleged victim, and said she was nearly nine months pregnant when she had sex with her husband in the house he was renovating. Drummond said, "Due to (the teenager's) challenges, due to her limitations, she does not have the wherewithal to make this up. This defendant preyed on her, and unfortunately for him he left forensic evidence that proves it." Sullivan countered, "This all started with a note," referring to a note written by the girl and discovered by her parents, who notified police. "Anybody can have a crush, a fantasy, a daydream put down on paper. "She isn't the first 16-year-old girl to do that," he said. Contact writer Cheryl Caswell at cher...@dailymail.com or 304-348-4832.
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