Jury drops assault charges against Philipsburg resident

A 23-year-old Philipsburg man was found guilty Thursday night of corruption of a minor after being tried for the January 1996 assault of a 17-year-old girl at the Centre County Courthouse in Bellefonte. The jury of six men and six women found Charles W. Myers not guilty of charges of sexual assault and indecent assault.

The victim testified for several hours about her relationship with Myers and the January incident.

The girl told Assistant District Attorney Karen Arnold that she first met Myers in July 1992 at a family reunion in Buffalo, N.Y. During that day she and Myers had consensual sex in the woods, she said.

Myers had sex with the victim two or three times more before the January 1996 incident, she said. One of the encounters occurred when Myers tried to help her after she ran away from home because her mother's boyfriend was molesting her, she said.

These encounters were consensual, she said, but the January incident was not.

On the day of the alleged assault, the victim went to Myers' home with her brother to chop wood, she said. At some point her brother and a friend left the home, leaving her alone with Myers and two young children, she said.

In the kitchen Myers pinned her in a corner and began kissing her, she said. She told him to stop because he was married, she said. Myers' wife was at work at the time the incident occurred.

"Somehow," she said, they ended up on the floor where he forced her to have sex with him despite her saying no "a number of times" and trying to push him away.

The victim became pregnant as a result of the incident and gave birth in November 1996, she said. She was quiet about the incident until the birth of the baby when she told a nurse and the Philipsburg state police were contacted.

Police arrested Myers a few weeks later.

Myers, however, told a very different story when he took the stand.

He admitted that he had sex with the victim when she was 13, but he said they had consensual sex at least 20 times after the incident in Buffalo. He said the incident he was on trial for was also one of consensual sex.

Myers told his attorney, First Assistant Public Defender Deborah Lux, that he began kissing the victim in the kitchen but that she was kissing him back and never said no or tried to push him away.

During the incident, Myers' sister-in-law had entered the home to ask for a ride home from school after serving detention, he said. She observed Myers and the victim kissing, he said. She went upstairs and waited until Myers called her downstairs to take her home.

Myers' sister-in-law told the jury that she believed the victim was not being forced to kiss Myers.

Lux pointed out to the jury that Myers left the home after the incident for several minutes and that the victim made no attempt to flee or call for help.

Judge David E. Grine set Myers' sentencing date for March 3 at the Centre County Courthouse in Bellefonte. Myers is not being held.