A former police officer was found guilty Friday of sexually assaulting a disabled woman at the Pines Community Center where he worked as a maintenance supervisor.
Robert Magoon, 74, of Tilton, was convicted on four out of five aggravated felonious sexual assault charges against him. He is facing two other trials related to accusations that he touched seven girls at the community center between August 2012 and May 2016.
This trial dealt with whether Magoon assaulted the now-29-year-old woman who “has a disability that renders her incapable of freely arriving at an independent choice as to whether or not to engage in sexual conduct” three separate times between January 2013 and April 2014 while he worked at the Pines in Northfield.
Magoon was found guilty of performing sexual acts on the woman and attempting to have her perform sexual acts on him. The jury began deliberations Thursday afternoon and came out of deliberations around 1:30 p.m. Friday after breaking for the evening.
The case originally included seven aggravated felonious sexual assault charges, but two were dropped on Thursday after Merrimack County Super Court judge Diane Nicolosi ruled the woman’s testimony was not clear enough to support the charges. Each charge carries the possibility of 10 to 20 years in state prison.
Prosecutor Wayne Coull thanked the jury for their hard work on the case and applauded the victim for testifying. He declined to comment further on the case because of the pending trials, which he is also prosecuting.
The trial centered around the woman’s testimony, which went on for almost two hours on Wednesday. During that time, the woman, who uses a wheelchair and has speech and cognitive difficulties due to a lack of connective tissue in the brain, answered questions about how Magoon persuaded her to follow him into a community room at the center with the promise of a doughnut three times before sexually assaulting her. And each time, he told her not to tell anyone, a secret she kept for years before her mother asked her in 2016 if something ever happened between her and Magoon.
The defense attempted to poke holes in the woman’s credibility, relying on testimony from the woman’s mother and her one-on-one aide that the woman was known to lie, perhaps as a result of her disability, because she could not grasp the consequences of her actions. They also argued there was no evidence the woman was incapable of consenting to sexual activity, despite her being unable to name the body parts where she had been touched and where Magoon forced her to touch by guiding her hand.
But Coull argued that jurors would have to believe the woman was capable of fabricating situations she has no context for, such as sexual encounters. He said several times throughout the trial that the woman has a “childlike” mind and a black-and-white view on the world. Coull said arguing the woman could invent such allegations made no sense.
“That’s a pretty complex, complicated, manipulative thing for someone to do,” he said during closing arguments on Thursday. “Did you think any of those things when you met her?”
Magoon’s $10,000 cash bail was revoked and he was taken into custody after the verdict. His sentencing is scheduled for July 6, after his other trials are scheduled to begin. The first of those trials is scheduled for jury selection on May 1. Magoon has the ability to file for an appeal 30 days after sentencing.
(Caitlin Andrews can be reached at 369-3309, candrews@cmonitor.com.)