Life term levied in girl's abuse

Man found guilty of decade-old assaults in Miller County

TEXARKANA -- A Miller County jury sentenced a man to life plus 20 years in prison Friday for sexually abusing a 6-year-old more than a decade ago.

Gerald Herbert Lowery, 58, was selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door in Texarkana in 2004. He was living with a woman more than half his age with whom he worked, and they were living with another woman who had a 6-year-old daughter. While the victim's mother and Lowery's girlfriend would get out of the van and knock on doors to sell vacuums, Lowery was molesting the girl.

Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Connie Mitchell told a jury of six men and six women that she could not charge Lowery for his crimes in the van because the victim did not know if she was in Texas or Arkansas when those assaults occurred.

But Lowery could be charged in Miller County for his conduct with the girl while in a unit of the Links Apartments where Lowery lived with his girlfriend, the victim and her mother.

Thirteen years after the sexual abuse, when the victim was 19 and living in California, her mother handed her the phone. It was a voice she hadn't heard in 13 years, and old traumatic memories flooded back into her mind. Eventually the victim told her mother what had happened to her in 2004 and 2005, and law enforcement officers were contacted.

Lowery was convicted Friday of rape and sexual assault. He received a life sentence for rape and a maximum 20-year term for assault. Circuit Judge Carlton Jones ordered the terms to run consecutively. There is no possibility of parole from a life sentence in Arkansas.

The jury also heard testimony last week from an 11-year-old relative of Lowery's who alleges she was a victim as well. The girl stepped forward after Lowery's arrest last year on the Miller County charges. She was living in Pulaski County with her mother and Lowery when Lowery was arrested. Pulaski County officials currently have an active warrant for Lowery in the 11-year-old's reported abuse.

Under questioning Friday morning by Managing Public Defender Jason Mitchell, Lowery denied sexually abusing anyone, though he did describe long-term inappropriate sexual misconduct as a child with a younger sister.

Metro on 12/12/2018

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