- April 25, 2024
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Flagler County Sheriff's Office deputies have arrested a 37-year-old man on charges that he molested a young girl in 2013.
James Albert Taylor has been charged with lewd/lascivious molestation of a victim under the age of 12, according to Flagler County Sheriff's Office reports.
The crime was reported to Flagler County Sheriff's Office deputies in November of 2013, when a woman called the Sheriff's Office and said that her daughter told her that Taylor, her husband and a a registered sex offender, had repeatedly entered the girl's bedroom at night or in the early morning hours and touched her breasts and buttocks, according to a case report.
Those crimes occurred between Aug. 1 and Nov. of 2013, according to a felony warrant for Taylor's arrest. The victim, who was 10 or 11 when many of the incidents occurred, had two sisters who lived in the house at the time. Because the mother worked several different jobs, Taylor was often left alone with the children. "They would stuff the blankets and sheets under her so that he could not put his hands under the covers," according to a summary of a forensic interview with the girl recounted in the case report, but "he would touch her over the covers."
The girl was interviewed by a forensic interviewer at the Children's Advocacy Center in Bunnell in December of 2013. She told the interviewer that Taylor would come into her room as she slept, step carefully over the squeaky floor boards and touch her inappropriately. She would then move quickly and he would run out of the room, the girl said.
The case report also recounts an instance before August, 2013, when the mother and daughter, who was then 8 or 9, lived in Gainesville: The girl said Taylor entered the bathroom as she showered and tried to wash her off, touching her on her breasts and between her legs. He then asked her to bend over, and then pulled down his pants when she refused, according to the report.
Other incidents occurred in Ocala and in Palm Coast, according to the report.
The girl told the forensic interviewer that she hadn't told about the molestation earlier because she feared Taylor's violence.
The mother told an interviewer that she doubted her daughter's assertions. "She also finds the previous convictions of her husband as misunderstandings," a deputy wrote in a case report.
A charging affidavit filled out in January of 2014 notes that the victim's sisters disclosed other events that occurred in Marion County and Alachua County.
Taylor was convicted of lewd and lascivious lewd and lascivious on a child under 16 in 2000 and of lewd or lascivious battery on a victim 12-15 in 2005, and was then charged in Osceola County with failing to register as a sex offender, according to a June 5, 2014 news release posted on the website of the Osceola County Sheriff's Office. He was also arrested on an out-of-county warrant in Flagler County in 2013, according to county jail records.
Circuit Judge David Walsh signed a felony warrant Oct. 9, 2015 for Taylor's arrest in connection with the crimes reported to Flagler County deputies.
Deputies arrested Taylor at 6:30 a.m. Oct. 14. He is being held without bond at the county jail.
