BY MAT CLOUSER
Brandon—46-year-old Brandon resident Richard Welch was arraigned on charges of aggravated sexual assault on a child after DNA evidence showed that he had fathered a child with a 12-year-old girl.
Welch pleaded not guilty in Rutland criminal court on Wednesday but faces a minimum sentence of 10 years and a maximum of life if convicted and is being held without bail pending a weight of evidence trial. No date for that trial has yet been set.
According to court documents, the investigators from the Child First Advocacy Center (CFAC)in Rutland County were first made aware of the situation on August 16 after the Brandon Police Department was contacted by the girl’s father stating that he had been sent photographs of his visibly-pregnant daughter in town.
The father told police that he had been unable to see his daughter since May despite having 50/50 custody with her mother.
Upon investigation, BPD noted that the child was “visibly” pregnant and that it appeared as if she was wearing a belly harness to conceal the pregnancy. At that time, BPD officer Sgt. Murach advised the girl’s family that they should seek medical advice and that a failure to do so could harm both the girl and her baby. Sgt. Murach also reported the case to the Department of Children and Families (DCF).
According to court documents, the child was confirmed to be approximately 38 weeks pregnant later that day and indicated that she would have been 11 years old at the time of conception.
During subsequent CFAC interview with the girl, records show her saying she was aware of the machinations of sexual intercourse by way of discussion with other children and via sexual education at school.
Initially, the girl said she was not sexually active and did not know how she could have become pregnant, stating that she sometimes sleepwalks but does not remember anything, indicating she attributed her growing stomach to being a “chubby” kid despite having missed her period since December.
Upon subsequent interviews, the girl began to say that she thought that Welch might be the father of her child, born on June 30. Court documents show the girl denying that she’d had sex with Welch but saying “maybe something could have happened while she was sleeping” and that she was a “pretty hard sleeper” who doesn’t wake up to “anything other than the smoke alarm.”
The girl also stated that she did not believe the father could be anyone other than Welch.
The affidavits show Welch describing to police how the girl got into bed with Welch on multiple occasions and that Welch sleeps in the nude, although he claimed to have been dealing with erectile dysfunction for some time.
Records show that Welch also indicated that the girl had been unhappy visiting her father’s house but fell short of accusing him of raping the girl, saying only that “he doesn’t know what happened.”
The girl’s mother also indicated that she thought the girl could have become pregnant at her father’s house while also acknowledging previous sexual assault allegations against Welch in which the affidavit says Welch “stuck his penis inside one of her kid’s mouths and she had laughed at it.”
The child’s mother claimed it was untrue and that “all her kids were dragged into this,” adding that she had never seen “anything weird with Rick.”
Both Welch and the girl’s father took voluntary DNA tests. The results proved that the girl’s father could not be the father of her child while also showing that Welch was 72 trillion times more likely to be the child’s father than a “random, untested, unrelated man in the population,” and triggered Welch’s arrest by the Rutland County Sheriff’s Special Investigations Unit.
In court on Wednesday, Judge Cortland Corsones heard arguments for and against Welch’s release on bail, noting that the court presumes to hold defendants without bail when jailed for crimes that rise to the level of a potential life sentence.
“That presumption, frankly, is pretty strong in this case,” said Corsones.
