By Vicky Wedig
Staff writer
An initial appearance was adjourned until May 4 for a West Bend man charged with sexually assaulting his daughter when the girl was between 2 and 10 years old in the Town of LaFayette.
The man, 46, who is not being named here to protect his daughter’s identity, was charged March 7 in Walworth County Circuit Court with sexual assault of a child younger than 13, child enticement, incest and exposing his genitals or pubic area.
After hearing a presentation about sexual assault and safe dating Jan. 19, 2016, at the Alternative High School at Gateway Technical College in Elkhorn, the then-17-year-old girl wrote a thank-you note to the presenter, according to the criminal complaint. In the note, the girl said she was a victim but didn’t tell anyone until she was 11 years old, and, by then, her mom told counselors “that I was saying it for attention.” The girl said she tried to “push it down” and forget what happened, and, by the time she was 13 years old, she was doing drugs and harming herself, according to the complaint.
A forensic interviewer then spoke to the girl, who recounted an incident at her then-Town of Lafayette home when her father got into the bathtub with her and sexually assaulted her, according to the complaint. The girl estimated she was in kindergarten at that time.
The girl told the interviewer about other incidents in which her father got into the shower with her when she was in third grade and cuddled up with her in the basement of her uncle’s house, according to the complaint.
The girl’s brother and mother also recounted incidents of abuse.
