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Hernando Today

Trial Opens For Man Accused of Molesting Teen

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By KYLE MARTIN

Hernando Today

Published: December 18, 2008

BROOKSVILLE - Trial opened Wednesday for a man accused of molesting a girl when she was 14.

Jurors heard first from prosecutor Lisa Herndon, who characterized Richard McDivitt as a man who abused the trust of a young girl to take advantage of her.

She spoke of how an innocent nightly back rub evolved into inappropriate touching and how the alleged victim pretended to sleep while the suspect performed sex acts on her.

In McDivitt's defense, attorney Michael Amico suggested the allegations are actually a plot to get even with McDivitt for leaving the victim's mother.

"Richard ... was an adulterer, he was a cad, but he is not a child molester," Amico said.

McDivitt, 44, faces four sex-related charges on a minor under the age of 16 that carry a maximum penalty of 90 years if convicted.

The girl's mother, who will not be named to protect the victim's identity, took the witness stand first and her testimony set the context for the allegations.

After six years together, her relationship with McDivitt got rocky and the couple began to argue over finances and personal differences. McDivitt began spending more and more time over at a mutual friend's house, ostensibly to care for her horses.

But as McDivitt began to come home increasingly later, the victim's mother began to suspect that the two were having an affair.

"It don't take all night to feed the horses," she said.

In June 2006, on Father's Day, McDivitt abruptly quit his job and left his family to stay with his brother in Alabama. The mother was brokenhearted at this turn of events and the two divorced soon after.

She would not discover until later the alleged abuse that was occurring between the victim and McDivitt while she was working the night shift.

The girl, now 17, took the stand after her mother to repeat her allegations. Dressed in a gray polo shirt, jeans and her blonde hair pulled back in a pony tail, the witness nervously laced and unlaced her fingers together as Herndon began her questions.

She told of the trust she gave to McDivitt, of fishing trips and time spent together running errands. Then around the time she turned 14, the nightly rubs that McDivitt gave her at bedtime became something sexual, the girl testified.

She also testified that McDivitt took her out on back roads to teach her how to drive. In return, she was told to perform oral sex on him, she testified.

The defense spent part of its time clouding her testimony by pointing out discrepancies between Wednesday's testimony and a deposition from August 2007. But Amico also built on the theory that the victim fabricated the allegations as payback for hurting her mother.

"It made you furious, I can see it in your face now," Amico said.

He questioned why the victim did not speak up about the abuse until two months after McDivitt left for Alabama.

When Amico's probing became too much, the victim said in a voice close to a shout, "I don't want to remember this, but I have to."

After the victim finished on the stand, she hurried out of the courtroom. Her sobs were still audible.

Reporter Kyle Martin can be reached at 352-544-5271 or kmartin@hernandotoday.com.

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