Second Man Charged in Child SA

By Gordon Dritschilo
THE RUTLAND HERALD
The second man charged with repeatedly sexually assaulting an 8-year-old girl is on his second set of sexual assault allegations.

Mitchell Bowen Jr., 31, pleaded not guilty on Tuesday in Rutland criminal court to a charge of repeated aggravated sexual assault on a child — a felony with a 25-year minimum sentence and a maximum of life — and two charges of lewd and lascivious conduct with a child, felonies with a two-year minimum and a maximum of 15 years each.

Bowen was ordered held pending a weight of the evidence hearing.

Bowen pleaded guilty in 2015 to sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl and sentenced to two to eight years in prison. However, that conviction was thrown out in 2018 after the Vermont Supreme Court found that the crime had not been adequately explained during the change of plea hearing — one of several such findings following a 2017 precedent.

Rutland County State’s Attorney Ian Sullivan said on Tuesday that the charge still was pending and that there had been discussions of a plea deal, but that the new charge had affected the state’s attitude toward such a deal.

The current charge stems from a report that was made to police when a woman took her 8-year-old daughter to Rutland Regional Medical Center. The girl had told her mother she had repeatedly been sexually assaulted, according to affidavits, after her mother confronted her asking why she had been Googling the word “sex” on one of the computers at her school.

Police said the girl described assaults by Bowen and Chadd Patch, who pleaded not guilty to charges in the case on Tuesday. The girl described separate incidents involving the two men, according to affidavits, with the ones by Bowen preceding the ones by Patch. Police said the girl described each man engaging in different sex acts with her over a period of time.

Police said that when Patch confessed, he also told them that the girl had confided in him about the assaults by Bowen.

Bowen, on the other hand, denied everything, according to affidavits, saying the accusations were the result of another person targeting him and that the girl did not know anything about sex.

In court Thursday, defense attorney Joshua Stern argued that Bowen should be released to the custody of his mother, Holly Smith, of Orwell. Smith took the witness stand and testified that she lived with her husband and two grandchildren, ages 4 and 6, whom she is raising. She said he would assure Bowen followed conditions placed upon him.

“I’ve already lost a lot of my son, and I don’t want to lose him again,” she said.

Smith said that if Bowen were in prison with Patch, he was likely to attack Patch for having harmed the girl. She also said that she and her husband would be on-hand whenever the children were in the house, and that they had weekly Zoom meetings with the Vermont Department for Children and Families.

Assistant Rutland County State’s Attorney Daron Raleigh asked Smith whether she was aware her son had been charged with having sex with a 13-year-old girl when he was in his 20s.

“Yes, but there’s a lot of factors that come into that, that you didn’t bring up,” Smith replied. “It was not just him. It was a mutual thing.”

Judge Cortland Corsones said that while he did not doubt Smith’s sincerity, the presence of children in the home and Bowen’s criminal record — which Raleigh said included domestic assault, simple assault, giving false information to a police officer and numerous charges of violating abuse prevention orders — prompted him to hold Bowen without bail.

Bowen quickly tried to offer an alternate address where he could stay.

“My girlfriend will be there and so will my Nana,” he said.

Corsones told him to talk to his lawyer and bring it up at the next hearing.

gordon.dritschilo @rutlandherald.com