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Girl testifies that Howland man raped, molested her in 2015
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
A jury heard testimony Tuesday from a girl who was 11 last spring, when she says Jonathan R. Emerine, 24, of North Road in Howland raped and molested her.
She was staying overnight at Emerine’s house with her siblings and sleeping on the couch when Emerine walked into the living room and asked her if she wanted to watch a show on his cellphone with him.
Over the course of about an hour, they watched the movie while lying down on the couch together, then went to the basement a couple of times to do loads of laundry, she said. It was about 1 a.m.
In both the laundry room and on the couch, Emerine touched the girl while saying he was looking for her “tickle spot,” she said. He touched the girl in her chest and private area, she said. The allegation includes a threat or use of force.
As the touching became increasingly uncomfortable, the girl said, she started to text her mother, but she couldn’t say exactly what was happening because Emerine was watching her as she texted, she said. She also was afraid if she told the truth, Emerine would get angry, she said.
“Why do you want to go home? Is it because of this?” she said Emerine asked her over and over, referring to the touching.
“I just want to go home,” she said she told him.
Her mother arrived a little later and took her home, but she didn’t tell her about it. “I knew she would get mad,” she said of her mother. She added later, “I just knew it would break us up,” she said of the people in the home she cared about.
It was three months later, in July 2015, when the girl’s mother asked her whether Emerine had ever touched her – after another girl, 13, alleged that Emerine also had touched her.
Her mother learned that the 13-year-old had alleged that touching had occurred in late June, and went with the other girl’s mother to the Howland Police Department to report those allegations, she testified.
“I was mad, sick, completely sick,” she said of learning those allegations.
Those allegations are what caused her to tell her daughter about the other girl, and to ask her daughter whether Emerine had improperly touched her, she said.
At first, the girl wouldn’t answer. “She just kept her head down,” she said. “She held back, like she had to think about it,” she said.
After the story came out, the girl’s mother said she felt “completely out of control.” She added, “This was my worst nightmare. I thought if I screamed loud enough, I would wake up or something.”
If Emerine is convicted of rape, he could get a life prison sentence. He’s also charged with three counts of gross sexual imposition, which carry possible prison sentences of a couple of years each in prison. The trial resumes today.