Prosecutor Cassie Graham told jurors on Wednesday they were the only people who stood between a 45-year-old man found guilty of sexually abusing a 5-year-old girl and his future victims.
She said evidence in the three-day trial showed that Deese was sexually attracted to little girls and there will never be a day that children in the community would be safe from Christopher Deese, and asked jurors to send him to prison for life.
Christopher Deese, left, is escorted out of the 140th District Court after he was sentenced to 75 years in prison for sexually abusing a 5-year-old girl four years ago. (Gabriel Monte/A-J)
“That is who this man is,” she told jurors. “That when he sees (a little girl) he’s turned on. You know the character of this man, and you as jurors are the only ones who have the benefit now of hindsight and knowing what he is capable of.”
After about 45 minutes, jurors returned to the 140th District Court with three sentences that would keep Deese in prison for at least 75 years.
Earlier that day, jurors deliberated for about an hour before returning to the courtroom with a verdict finding Deese, who has been held at the Lubbock County Detention Center since Nov. 18, 2021, guilty as charged of two counts of aggravated assault of a child younger than 6 and a count of indecency with a child by sexual contact.
Deese faced a punishment of 25 years to life in prison without parole on the first two counts and two to 20 years in prion for the last charge.
Jurors sentenced Deese to 50 years in prison for the first count, 25 years for the second count and 10 years for the third count.
District Judge Douglas Freitag granted prosecutors’ request to run Deese’s punishments on the first two counts consecutively, meaning he will have to finish one sentence before serving the other.
Investigating sexual abuse
The sentence comes after a three-day trial during which jurors heard evidence that showed Deese sexually abused the girl while she and her brother lived in a trailer home in Wolfforth.
Deese’s charges stem from a 2020 Wolfforth police investigation that began after the girl and her younger brother were removed by CPS from Deese’s home in Wolfforth.
A CPS investigator told jurors he was assigned in July 2020 to look into potential child neglect after receiving reports the children in Deese’s home were seen outside unsupervised and naked. Another report stated the girl had been asking people for food but did not appear malnourished.
Miguel Rodriguez said Deese and his wife were uncooperative when he initially visited them and denied him access to the home.
He said he returned about two weeks later with a court order and inspected the home, which he said was filled with trash.
“There were no walkways (inside the home),” he said. “There was no way to get to the back of the house.”
He said the home reeked so strongly of garbage and dog urine that he couldn’t spend more than two minutes inside.
“(The children) were sleeping on a toddler-sized mattress on the floor, with roaches crawling all around it,” he told jurors.
He said he brought the children and Deese’s wife to the CPS offices to discuss an appropriate placement for the children.
However, he said Deese later arrived and left with his wife and the children before a suitable placement was determined.
Deese and the children were found a month later in Plainview living with a friend of Deese.
The next day the children were placed with a foster couple.
One of the foster parents told jurors that the night the children were placed with them, the girl made statements indicating she may have been sexually abused.
A pediatrician who examined the girl days later told jurors the girl revealed to her disturbing statements of sexual abuse by Deese.
The girl initially described a “tickle game” with Deese that involved him touching her inappropriately, Dr. Michal Pankratz told jurors.
“She was asking about if she would be playing the same games, basically with (her foster parents) that she did at home,” she said.
However, she siad the girl also described Deese making her perform a sexual act on him.
“I’d never heard anything like that before,” she told jurors through tears.
She told jurors the girl described the acts in a matter of fact manner.
“It did not come across as something that was shameful or worrisome to her,” she said.
A forensic interviewer with the Children’s Advocacy Center told jurors the girl made another outcry that Deese performed a sexual act on her.
Jurors also heard from the girl, now 10, who recounted one of the episodes of abuse.
Deese did not testify during the trial. However, jurors watched his interview with a Texas Department of Public Safety Special Agent, during which he said he believed the girl’s outcries came from watching an animated pornographic video he and his wife watch to get in the mood for sex.
He also believed the girl was coached into making the allegations.
Dr. Brenda Wilbanks, a psychologist who evaluated the girl, told jurors she’s not surprised the girl’s memories were incomplete.
“That would be very unusual if she remembered all of it,” she said. “Trauma affects everybody’s memory.”
However, she told jurors that during her sessions with the girl five years ago, she did not believe the girl was coached into making the outcry.
She also told jurors that it was unlikely the girl internalized memories of a pornographic video that Deese watched and turned it into a memory of sexual abuse.
“I don’t think she would have known what she was watching and the words she used were like it happened to her,” she said. “Her description is like it happened to her and not something she watched.”
Deese’s defense attorney, Jesse Mendez, told jurors prosecutors failed to prove his client sexually abused the girl.
He said the witnesses they heard from only repeated the girl’s outcries and didn’t provide any physical evidence of his client’s guilt.
He told jurors the girl’s testimony was unreliable to find Deese guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
“She remembers only one incident,” he said. “So why is it the state is getting three bites of the apple?”
However, prosecutor Cassie Nesbitt told jurors that to acquit Deese they would have to believe the girl was capable of making up those details as a 5-year-old and hold onto them for five years to tell them about it on the witness stand.
“At the end of the day there is no way that this little sweet five year old made this up,” she said.
Prosecutor Russell Mayne told jurors the girl’s credibility is supported by the witnesses they heard from during the trial, who said the girl described to them the abuse at Deese’s hands with words children use.
Nesbitt told jurors they could infer Deese’s guilt from his own actions when he hid the children from CPS for a month.
“That is evidence of guilt,” she said. “He didn’t want (the girl) interviewed.”
After the guilty verdicts, Mendez asked jurors to consider a sentence on the lower end of the punishment range, saying his client, a combat veteran with mental health issues, had no prior criminal history.
He told jurors that despite their verdict his client maintains his innocence and asked them to consider his client’s rough childhood as they decide his punishment.
“The fact that this is a sexual assault of a child case does not automatically merit a life sentence,” he said.
However, Nesbitt asked jurors to consider how Deese’s actions robbed the victim of her innocence. She reminded jurors about a statement Deese made during his interview with law enforcement, saying anyone who “hurts women and children didn’t deserve to walk this Earth.”
“And that is what we’re asking,” she said.
Nesbitt said after the trial that she requested the court run Deese’s punishments consecutively to ensure he stays away from the community for as long as possible.
“We feel very strongly that it is very important that this defendant is never allowed out in society, especially around children,” she said.
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Wolfforth man sentenced to 75 years for sexually abusing girl
