Winslow Man Convicted Of Child Sex Abuse

Saturday, December 14, 2013

FAYETTEVILLE — A Washington County jury took just more than an hour Friday evening to find a Winslow man guilty of two counts of second-degree sexual assault involving an 8-year-old girl.

Christopher Alan Foster, 27, was accused of inappropriately touching the girl in March.

“It’s something an 8-year-old girl should never, ever have to go through,” deputy prosecutor Terra Stephenson told jurors. “She’s always going to be a sexual assault victim.”

Judge William Storey sentenced Foster immediately, following the jury’s recommendation of eight years at the Arkansas Department of Correction and an $8,000 fine. Foster will have to register as a sex offender.

“You repeatedly abused and molested a child, a precious child,” Storey said during sentencing. “People who molest children are evil creatures.”

Storey said the girl was one of the brightest, most articulate child witnesses he has seen testify.

“We filed this case because we believed our victim and the jury did, too,” Stephenson said.

Foster contended the girl’s mother put her up to lying about the incident. Foster also contended he was under the influence of massive amounts of prescription narcotics, prescribed for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and a brain injury he suffered while on active duty in the military.

Foster argued the girl’s mother was keeping him drugged as part of an elaborate scheme to get him arrested.

“The truth of the matter is that mother got this child to lie,” Erwin Davis, attorney for Foster, told the jury. “Every man is the devil to her. She’s one sick puppy and she needs counseling.”