YOUNGSTOWN Man charged with raping 6-year-old girl

The Adult Parole Authority also has a hold on him.
By PATRICIA MEADE
VINDICATOR CRIME REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- It's been 12 years since a jury found Kevin N. Brown guilty of breaking into the apartment of an elderly woman whom his lawyer admitted Brown beat and tried to rape.
In a four-count indictment handed up Thursday, a Mahoning County grand jury has charged Brown with raping a 6-year-old relative June 26 and again July 6.
If found guilty, he faces life in prison.
A detective with the Youngstown Police Department juvenile division turned the case over to the Mahoning County Prosecutor's Office for direct presentment to the grand jury. The move avoided a preliminary hearing in municipal court.
Police arrested the 44-year-old Howard Street man around 8:30 p.m. last Friday after interviewing the girl. The child's mother had called police after hearing what the girl said happened the night before at the Howard Street house.
Brown has been in the county jail since his arrest, and there is a hold on him from the Adult Parole Authority, the jail said. He will be arraigned in common pleas court once the rape case has been assigned to a judge.
Police who spoke to the girl's mother at her Ferndale Avenue home last week got a description of Brown and his possible whereabouts. They found him within hours in the 2500 block of Market Street.
Girl's account: The girl told police she had been visiting a relative at the Howard Street house and that, once alone with Brown, he called her over to the couch, telling her that he wanted to play a game. The child described sexual acts to police, telling them that what he did to her hurt.
Witnesses who had been in the house and then left Brown alone with the girl were also interviewed by police.
The child was taken to Beeghly Medical Park for a rape exam.
No information was immediately available concerning the rape alleged to have taken place in June.
Police noted on their report that Brown got out of prison about a year ago.
Past crimes: Vindicator files show that Brown broke into two senior-citizen apartments in July 1988 on East Dewey Avenue, ransacking one and stealing a TV. At the second apartment, he beat an 84-year-old woman and tried to rape her on her bed, Elizabeth A. Kobly, an assistant county prosecutor at the time, told the jury.
Kobly is now a municipal court judge.
Police "caught him red-handed in the apartment" and saw him pummeling and swearing at the elderly woman and trying to force sexual intercourse on her, Kobly said during the trial in April 1989. The woman struggled and cried for help before falling unconscious, the prosecutor said in court.
At the time, Brown's lawyer, Edward A. Sowinski, had acknowledged that his client committed burglary, felonious assault and attempted rape, but said he had no recollection of what happened, Vindicator files show. Brown had pleaded both innocent and innocent by reason of insanity, and his lawyer said he suffered from a psychosis that included symptoms of blackouts, amnesia and the inability to distinguish fantasy from reality.
Brown had initially been found incompetent to stand trial until after several months of treatment in a state mental hospital.
In May 1989, a judge sentenced Brown to two 12- to 15-year prison terms to be served concurrently. A jury had found Brown guilty of felonious assault and burglary but not attempted rape, according to Vindicator files.
meade@vindy.com