By Jeff Lehr
jlehr@joplinglobe.com
A Carthage man has been ordered to stand trial on a charge that he took advantage of a friend of his wife’s by removing her clothes, photographing her in the nude and sexually molesting her while she was passed out from drinking too much.
Bradley D. Taylor, 40, was ordered bound over for trial on a charge of deviate sexual assault after a preliminary hearing Thursday before Associate Judge Richard Copeland in Jasper County Circuit Court in Joplin.
A 23-year-old woman testified at the hearing that she went out drinking with Taylor and his wife on Nov. 17. She told the court that she had been a friend of Taylor’s wife’s for years, and that she went to the El Charro restaurant for margaritas with the Taylors while her husband was working.
Afterward, she accepted a ride with the couple back to their salon, and Bradley Taylor went out to get more for them to drink, she said. He returned with soft drinks from Sonic to which he added alcohol of some sort, she told the court.
She got so drunk, she testified, that she eventually passed out on a mattress at the shop. She said she awakened sometime later to find the defendant removing her clothing and positioning her in various ways on the mattress. She said she was slipping in and out of consciousness but realized he was taking pictures of her.
“The room was dark, but there was this constant flash going on,” she told the court.
She said she threw up at one point, and Taylor became solicitous toward her, calling her pet names and telling her he would take care of it. She said she was crying and begging him to call her husband to come and get her.
Asked by Kimberly Fisher, assistant prosecutor, if Taylor did anything else to her that she could recall, she replied: “He definitely fondled me and inserted his finger into me.”
She said she repeatedly told Taylor to stop throughout the ordeal.
Mike Roberts, the defendant’s attorney, got the alleged victim to acknowledge on cross-examination that she went to El Charro with the Taylors and drank there of her own free will, and that she and Taylor’s wife asked him to go get more alcohol for them once they got back to the shop.
She also acknowledged that her husband arrived at the shop while they were there, but he left upset that she was so drunk.
Roberts asked if she went out with Taylor’s wife in order to discuss troubles she was having in her marriage. She denied it. Roberts asked if the Taylors and she had discussed the possibility of engaging in sex games at the shop. She said she did not remember any such conversation.
She acknowledged that Taylor took pictures of her and Taylor’s wife together on a couch before she passed out. Asked if she could recall a photograph being taken of her touching the breast of Taylor’s wife, she said she did not.
She also denied coming on to the defendant in any manner, and said she was not sure where Taylor’s wife was when he was removing her clothes, taking pictures and molesting her.
She testified that she begged Taylor to take her home, and that he finally did. Roberts asked her why she did not report the incident to police until five days later. She said she feared that her husband would go after Taylor if he learned what had happened, and that he could get in trouble with the law.
“I didn’t want (him) to get in any trouble for what had happened to me,” she testified.
The judge set May 21 as the date for Taylor’s first appearance in a trial division of the court.
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