Published: June 23, 2009 11:52 pm      

Jailer admits to having sex with prisoner

Jurors hear differing statements from Charles Howard

CATLETTSBURG — Elliott County Jailer Charles Howard gave two vastly differing statements to a Kentucky State Police detective investigating an allegation that Howard had raped a female prisoner while transporting her to jail.

In his first statement to Detective Erik Kouns, Howard, 51, of Sandy Hook, flatly denied engaging in any sort of improper behavior with the alleged victim, a 28-year-old Boyd County resident who’d been arrested in Elliott County on an outstanding warrant.

However, in the second statement, Howard admitted to having sex with the woman, but said it was consensual and she was the one who initiated it.

“I didn’t force her, threaten her or promise her nothing,” Howard said.

Howard’s tape-recorded interviews with Kouns and an audio recording of a statement the alleged victim gave the detective were among the few pieces of evidence jurors heard on the second day of Howard’s trial in Boyd Circuit Court.

The day was mostly filled with lengthy delays. Kouns, the lead investigator in the case, was the first and only witness to take the stand on Tuesday, and he was unable to finish his testimony.

Howard is charged with first-degree rape and could get 10 to 20 years in prison if he is convicted. He remains in office but was stripped of his transport duties by the Elliott Fiscal Court shortly after his arrest.

Both of Howard’s interviews with Kouns took place on Sept. 1, the day after the alleged rape. The detective testified that he had traveled to Sandy Hook to serve a search warrant on Howard’s vehicle and caught up with Howard in the parking lot of the First Baptist Church there.

On the tape, Howard expresses surprise when told by Kouns of the allegation he had sex with the woman. He also tells the detective the only stop he made while driving the woman to the Boyd County Detention Center was at the Marathon convenience store on U.S. 60 in the Rush area. That was because the woman was thirsty and had requested a soft drink, he said.

Later in the interview, though, Kouns informs Howard that several witnesses had seen him and the woman together in Howard’s vehicle on the Appalachian Fuels property, located along Ky. 180 just off the Cannonsburg Interstate 64 exit, and that surveillance cameras there had recorded his car entering and leaving the property.

After a lengthy silence, Howard is heard on the tape saying: “OK, let’s go to the sheriff’s office.”

Howard’s final words on the tape were to the effect that he didn’t want his wife to find out what was going on.

At the sheriff’s department, Howard admits to Kouns that he engaged in sexual relations with the woman. But, he tells the detective it was the woman’s idea and that he tried to resist her.

“She came on to me up there,” he said. “She wanted me to have sex with her and this and that before she went to jail, and I said no.”

Ultimately, though, Howard said he “did something stupid” and gave in. The sex occurred in his vehicle in a small cemetery just up the hill from Appalachian Fuels, he said.

The alleged victim, though, told Kouns she spurned Howard’s sexual advances at the cemetery. After that, she said, Howard drove her to an isolated road off U.S. 60 in the Rush area and forced himself on her.

Following the alleged rape, the woman said on the tape, after Howard resumed driving toward the Boyd County lockup, he told her several times she could jump out of his vehicle and escape if she wanted to and he would not try and stop her.

“I think he wanted me to jump out because he didn’t want me to say anything,” she said.

The woman reported the alleged rape to Boyd County jail deputies. She said she considered not saying anything about what had happened, “but then I go to thinking, ‘How many more has he done that to?’” she said.

Judge Marc I. Rosen told jurors to report back to court at 1 p.m. today for the resumption of the trial.