- April 26, 2024
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A former child specialist was arrested Tuesday by the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office following accusations that he molested a teenage client at the residential addiction treatment program where the man worked, according to authorities.
Corey Hodges, 34, of Palm Coast, was fired by Stewart-Marchman-Act Behavioral Healthcare after the allegations surfaced earlier this month. While no other criminal offenses were uncovered during the investigation, other teenage girls at the program said that Hodges was a pervert who would stare at their bodies, make inappropriate sexual comments and purposely drop things so that he could watch them bend over to pick them up.
Hodges is facing one charge each of lewd or lascivious molestation and lewd or lascivious conduct, according to a Volusia County Sheriff's Office press release.
The victim is a 15-year-old girl who is a client at the Residential Adolescent Program run by Stewart-Marchman-Act.
Hodges started working at the Daytona Beach facility in February. Earlier this month, the girl disclosed that Hodges had molested her two times last month while she was in her room at the RAP program. On both occasions, the victim said, Hodges touched her breasts under her shirt and also rubbed her over her clothes and kissed her on the lips. Both times, she said, Hodges told her not to tell anyone about it. On a third occasion, the girl said that after she broke her finger playing football, Hodges drove her to the hospital. On the way back, the victim said that Hodges rubbed her thigh and told her to pull up her shorts, but she refused, and nothing more happened.
Investigators with the Sheriff’s Office’s Sex Crimes Unit interviewed other teenage girls at the program.
One, a 17-year-old, told investigators that Hodges would ask her for hugs, made comments about other girls’ bodies and talked about beating up a boy she was dating because Hodges was jealous.
An 18-year-old girl said Hodges told her that she should be a stripper because she had a nice body.
And a 14-year-old girl revealed to investigators that while she was going through heroin withdrawal, Hodges ordered her to get out of her bed even though she told him that she was naked. She got up and tried to cover herself with a blanket, but she said that Hodges ordered her to drop it.
During questioning by investigators, Hodges denied the allegations. Surveillance video from inside the facility showed Hodges going into one of the girls’ rooms, in violation of staff policies. He also violated their policies when he drove the girl to the hospital instead of having a female employee do it.
Investigators offered Hodges an opportunity to submit to a voice stress analysis, but his lawyer told him not to take the test, the report states.
On Monday, investigators with the Sheriff’s Office’s Sex Crimes Unit obtained an arrest warrant for Hodges. He was arrested Tuesday by the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office and transported to the Volusia County Branch Jail, in Daytona Beach, where he’s being held on $60,000 bond.
Hodges had no previous record, according to the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office website.
Any other victims or anyone with information about Hodges is asked to call the Sheriff’s Office’s Sex Crimes Unit at 386-323-3574.
— Andrew O’Brien contributed to this report.
Editor's note, July 28, 2023: This article was initially a compilation of three unrelated public safety-related stories: the one shown here, with the headline "Palm Coast man arrested on molestation charges in Daytona," plus a news brief about charges filed against an accused robber, and another news brief about a search for a missing person. The Observer was notified in July 2023 that Google searches for the name of the missing person, who had long since been found, were bringing up the headline "Palm Coast man arrested on molestation charges in Daytona" — misleadingly connecting the formerly missing person's name to the molestation accusations. We have therefore removed the news brief about the missing person and the news brief about the robbery from this story page and URL. However, they were also posted separately on our website and are available HERE in the case of the missing person report and HERE in the case of the robbery brief.
