Published: May 15, 2008 11:47 pm            

Accuser details encounter with former high school coach

CATLETTSBURG — EDITOR'S NOTE: Readers may find language in the story to be offensive.



Vincent Jones’ accuser cried on the witness stand Thursday as she described how he forced her to perform a sexual act on him in Boyd County High School’s in-school suspension classroom.

The alleged victim testified on the third day of Jones’ sodomy trial in Boyd Circuit Court that the incident occurred after Jones intercepted sexually explicit notes that she and another girl had been passing back and forth and apparently got the idea from those that she wanted to have sex with him.

The accuser said that Jones told the other girl, Ashley Craft, to stand guard at the door and then motioned for her to come over to his desk. He then kissed her, stuck his hand down the front of her pants and groped her genital area, told her to get down on her knees, grabbed her head and forced her mouth down onto his penis, she said.

The alleged victim said she told Jones to stop, but that she did not try to resist him physically because “he was an adult and an administrator.

“I was scared,” she said.

“Of what?” special prosecutor Gary Conn asked.

“Him,” she replied.

The name of the alleged victim is being used in court. However, it is not being published because it is the policy of The Independent to not identify alleged sex crime victims without their permission.

Jones, 46, a former assistant football coach and one-time star football player at BCHS, supervised the in-school suspension program, known as Choosing Alternative Behavior, or CAB. He is charged with one count of first-degree sodomy and could be sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison if he is convicted.

Jones’ alleged victim, now 18 and married, spent several hours on the stand Thursday. She testified in a low, even voice and became emotional only once, when Conn asked he to describe what happened to her in the CAB classroom on March 27 of last year.

“He (Jones) made me give him (oral sex),” she said, her voice breaking.

Jones sat stoically during his accuser’s testimony, occasionally writing on a sheet of yellow legal paper in front of him or leaning over and whispering to his attorney, Michael Curtis.

The accuser said she has had been sent to CAB for sneaking out of one of her classes and going into the teacher’s lounge to get a soft drink. That occurred on the previous Friday, she said. On Tuesday, she said she met with school Administrator John Stevens, who told her to report immediately to CAB.

When she got there, she said, one other girl was there, but that girl left soon thereafter. Craft, she said, came in a short time later.

She said it was Craft who had mentioned having sex with Jones in the notes the two were passing. She said she responded that she didn’t think that would be right because Jones was so much older.

“I told her, ‘Whatever floats your boat,’” she said.

Following the forced sex act, the accuser said, Jones let her and Craft leave a few minutes early. On their way to catch the bus, they stopped in a restroom, where they saw two other girls and told them what had happened.

The alleged victim said she didn’t tell anyone else about had happened until two days later because she was frightened and embarrassed. She said she finally told her father about it after he came to pick her up at her job at a Catlettsburg fast-food restaurant. The accuser’s parents then contacted the Boyd County Sheriff’s Department.

Also on Thursday, Craft, 18, testified that she engaged in oral sex with Jones on four occasions at the school, including earlier on the day of the alleged incident with the accuser.

Jones was never charged in those incidents because Craft told authorities she consented to the sex. Under Kentucky law, a person 16 or older can legally consent to sexual activity.

Craft also told jurors that Jones told her he’d go easy on her punishment in exchange for sexual favors.

She said it was standard procedure for Jones to make students who were referred to the CAB program write 650 times, “I will not get CAB for the rest of the school year.” However, “He (Jones) told me if I would give him (oral sex), he wouldn’t make me write sentences,” she said.

Curtis has maintained that Craft and the accuser concocted phony allegations against Jones because they thought the punishment he doled out in the CAB program was too harsh and they wanted to get him fired. However, both testified that they did not have a problem with Jones and that they weren’t particularly upset because he made them write sentences.

Craft said that Jones even came to her defense on an occasion when she got into a profanity-laced shouting match with Stevens after he accused her of stealing a bracelet from another student.

The trial is scheduled to resume at 1 p.m. today.

        

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