PINEVILLE, Mo. — Thirteen years ago, the slumber party of four Missouri girls morphed into a nightmare of alleged sexual assault that was recounted by them again Wednesday at their accused assailant’s second trial in McDonald County.

After a trial in 2001, Kevin D. Scott, 47, of Licking, was assessed two life sentences and three 15-year terms on convictions for two counts of statutory rape and three counts of forcible sodomy. The convictions subsequently were overturned, and a new trial was ordered.

Jurors were selected Tuesday for the retrial in McDonald County Circuit Court on nine felony counts. The first witnesses were called to testify Wednesday, including all four alleged victims. The trial is expected to conclude today or Friday.

The women, now in their mid-20s, were 13 and 14 years old on the night of July 2-3, 1997.

Two are sisters, the other two close friends. They were spending the night together at the home of the sisters in a remote part of McDonald County. It was to be a night of playing cards, listening to music and dyeing their hair green with Kool-Aid — just “girl things,” as one of the women described it for the court.

It turned into a night of humiliation, abuse, terror and rape, according to their testimonies.

‘Horrible day’

“It was a horrible day,” one of them said. “I’ll never forget it.”

The mother of the sisters had gone to work, leaving the girls alone for the night, a somewhat unusual situation for them but not unheard of given their ages, the two said. Besides, they expected her back before the night was over.

About dusk, the women said, Scott and another man showed up, looking for the sisters’ mother. The sisters had seen Scott a couple of times previously and knew him as an acquaintance of their parents, who had split up and were living separately. The men came inside to wait for the girls’ mother. They had been drinking beer but remained friendly with them, the women said.

Scott and the other man were there a short time, and they left when the older sister told them that it was getting late and the girls were headed to bed, according to the testimony. The three older girls shared the two sisters’ big bed in their bedroom, while the younger sister fell asleep on a couch in the living room. One of the women estimated that the men left and the girls went to bed about 11 p.m.

The older sister testified that she was awakened about an hour later, around midnight, by someone knocking on the front door. She did not know what to do, she said. She couldn’t think who it could be. Then came knocking on their bedroom window, and she woke up one of the other girls to tell her. The other girl had gone back to sleep by the time someone was back at the front door, this time pounding loudly, she said.

She said she went to the door, looked out a window and saw Scott. She said she didn’t know why he was back since her mother had not returned. She said she opened the door slightly and Scott jerked it open wider, causing her to scream. He clapped his hand over her mouth and forced her into the bedroom, where the other two girls then were awake, she said.

“He said that he wanted to get laid and that one of us was going to be first,” one of the women told the court.

The sexual abuse of the girls began with the three in the bedroom, according to the testimony. The women said he controlled them by pulling them about by their hair, hitting them and threatening to harm them further if any of them screamed or tried to get away. They said he forced them to remove their clothes and to perform oral sex acts on him in the bedroom.

The younger sister remained asleep on the couch in the living room throughout the initial abuse of the others in the bedroom, according to the testimony. But their assailant soon turned his attention to her as well, they said, forcing her sister to wake her up and then raping the younger one on the couch in front of them. He also forced her to perform oral sex on him and made the girls perform acts on each other as well, they testified.

The women corroborated much of each other’s testimony on direct examination by Sherrie Hansen, the assistant prosecutor. But each also acknowledged that her memory of some of the details of the night and the order of events had faded over the years.

“It’s hard to pinpoint things (that happened),” one of them said, “because it was just a constant, just constant. There was no rest from it.”

The upshot of the testimony about what took place in the living room was that Scott raped one of the two friends who were sleeping over and tried to rape the older sister before raping the younger sister a second time, and finally passing out on top of her on a love seat about daybreak.

The younger sister said she tried to fight him off when he raped her the first time, but he was too powerful for her. She said it scared her when he told her he liked her the best and that he thought he might take her with him when he left.

It was when he fell asleep that one of the girls finally was able to run for help down the road at an aunt’s house. The women told the court that the aunt rushed to their house with a male friend, who came in swinging a small baseball bat at Scott.

The aunt’s friend testified that he hit Scott three times in the head with the bat, trying to knock him out. The other girls fled the house with the aunt and ran to a neighbor’s home. The girl’s purported rescuer told the court that Scott pulled on his clothes and fled into some woods once the girls got away.

Defense

Frank Yankoviz, a public defender representing Scott, focused during cross-examination of the four women on apparent inconsistencies in their testimonies Wednesday and statements they provided to the McDonald County Sheriff’s Department 13 years ago, depositions taken before the first trial, and testimony they gave at a preliminary hearing and the first trial.

Yankoviz spent time questioning one of the women about a prior allegation of molestation she had made against a man who was her father’s boss. He also questioned all of the alleged victims on whether any of them had consumed any beer with Scott and the other man when they first showed up at the house. They all denied it, even when Yankoviz called previous statements to their attention that appeared to conflict with their memories on that point.





Mistrial denied



Associate Circuit Judge Kevin Selby ruled before the retrial of Kevin Scott that the jury is not to be informed that a previous trial was held. Scott’s public defender tried to get a mistrial declared Wednesday when one of the alleged victims let a mention of the first trial slip during her testimony. In a sidebar with attorneys out of the hearing of jurors, the judge expressed regret about the slip-up but denied the motion for a mistrial.