Auman: It's your fault!

Published 10:05 am Friday, December 9, 2005

THOMASVILLE — The assistant district attorney who successfully prosecuted a child molestation/child rape case left no doubt in anyone’s mind — least of all the defendant’s — who is responsible for the vile acts.

On Thursday, Ray Auman reminded jurors of Wednesday testimony in which a victim expressed feelings of guilt about reporting the sexual abuse that led to others coming forward, the ensuing investigation and this week’s emotionally exhausting trial of Richard Colvin.

“If that doesn’t tear your guts out, you just don’t have any,” Auman told jurors. The acts are not the victims’ fault, he added.

Auman walked across the courtroom and to the table where Colvin was seated beside his lawyer.

Pointing directly at Colvin, an obviously irate Auman raised his voice and told the defendant, “It’s your fault! It’s your fault!”

At another point in his closing statement, Auman told jurors Colvin asked a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent, “‘What am I looking at? If it happened three or four times, what am I looking at?'”

To find the defendant innocent, Auman told jurors, they would have to find all six victims guilty.

After deliberating less than an hour Thursday afternoon, jurors found Colvin guilty of one count of rape and five counts of child molestation.

Auman’s closing began after Colvin’s testimony. The assistant district attorney told jurors the defendant might look and seem harmless.

” … Evil men can disguise themselves with the faces of angels,” he advised the jury.

John Forehand, Colvin’s lawyer, addressed the same theory in his closing: “I told you at the beginning of this case things are not always as they appear.”

He said a “snowball effect” took hold after one girl made an accusation.

One victim said Colvin raped her more than 100 times, but she could recall only one, Forehand told the jury.

“If the state’s evidence showed that, why aren’t we dealing with 100 counts?” he asked.

Jurors would decide, he told them, if a man involved in horseplay should be convicted of child molestation.

He described investigators in the case as part of the “grand conspiracy.”

Colvin, who had been out on bond, was taken into custody immediately after the guilty verdict was returned. He will remain in the Thomas County Jail until his Sept. 3 sentencing.