Fair worker tried on sex charge

If convicted, the defendant faces one to five years in prison.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Jermaine A. Jones knowingly engaged in sexual activity with a 14-year-old girl at the Canfield Fair, a prosecutor told a jury.
Jones' defense lawyer, however, emphasized that the girl didn't give police any account of sexual activity until her third encounter with fair police the day after the alleged offense.
"Not only did he know her age; he just didn't care," Natasha Frenchko, assistant Mahoning County prosecutor, told the jury in her brief opening statement Monday. Frenchko said Jones, a children's carnival ride operator, told the girl he was 31, and the girl told him she was 14 and would soon turn 15.
Jones, of Orchard Grove Avenue, East Liverpool, is on trial in the courtroom of Judge Maureen A. Sweeney of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court on a charge of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor. If convicted of the third-degree felony charge, he faces one to five years in prison.
Late on the evening of Sept. 1, the girl, who had been reported missing, entered the fair police headquarters, saying she had been separated from a friend and had been walking around looking for the friend and the friend's mother, police reported.
Jones' lawyer, Robert Rohrbaugh, told the jury the girl spoke again to police when she returned to the fair police headquarters the next day with her mother, at which point, Rohrbaugh said, a deputy sheriff told the girl she could call him later if she wished to change her story.
Reported sex act
It wasn't until they revisited the fair police station later that day that the girl reported anything about a sexual encounter, Rohrbaugh said in his opening statement. "Sometimes they tell you things to avoid getting in trouble," Rohrbaugh said of juveniles, adding that that's what happened in this case.
Police said the girl then told them she had met the man, whom she knew as Jermaine, early Saturday evening and saw him again while searching for her friend. She reported the man took her to his quarters in the bunkhouse, where he forced her to engage in a sex act with him. Frenchko said Jones arranged to have another carnival worker fill in for him when he left his work station with the girl.
The girl told police she could identify the offender, and she identified Jones when police walked with her around the fairgrounds. Jones was initially arrested on a rape charge, but the case was directly presented to the county grand jury, which meets in secret, and it decided to indict Jones on a lesser charge of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor, explained Timothy Franken, chief trial lawyer in the prosecutor's office.
Jones told police that the girl said she was 18 and that she consented to the sex act, and police said a witness corroborated Jones' account.
Rohrbaugh told the jurors that, as they consider the evidence to be presented, they should take into account previous statements made by witnesses and the investigative means used by law enforcement officers.