Robert Samuel Wheeland - Child Rapist Cop - Page 2
As the investigation continued, other young girls revealed to investigators that they too had been sexually abused by Wheeland and under similar circumstances. Investigators ultimately discovered a total of four alleged victims. Typically these alleged victims were 14 to 15 years of age, the usual 'troubled teen years', and easy pickings for a sexual predator.
Wheeland's trial in the first case began on March 7, 2007. The 'star witness' for the prosecution was the child victim herself. She indicated that she first met Wheeland in October, 2005 and that by January, 2006 he took her to secluded locations, where he fondled and kissed her. She testified that Wheeland would place her in situations that allowed him to molest her, take nude photographs of her, and ultimately to rape her.
The girl described for jurors how Wheeland lured her into his home by asking her to teach his daughter to play the flute. She testified that she didn't realize no one else was home until she was inside and that by that time Wheeland was herding her toward his bedroom, where he took Polaroid photographs of her and forced her to have sex.
Wheeland’s lawyer, Chad Richardson, as is typical, attacked the witness's credibility during cross-examination; at one point asking the teen whether his client had been circumcised.
Previously, during opening statements Richardson had told jurors that the victim has been in counseling since she was 7 or 8 years old and that she simply is not a credible witness.In spite of Richardson's attempts to cast the victim in an unfavorable light, the jury was not buying it. Wheeland's fate was sealed when a second girl's testimony painted a verbal picture very similar to that of the victim in the case at trial. By using the second girl as a witness, Assistant District Attorney Nikki Baker Dotson had established a pattern of conduct on the part of Wheeland and it was a pattern than the jury would take with them into deliberations.
