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Editor’s note: This story contains information about the alleged sexual assault of a child. If you know or suspect that anyone under 18 is being sexually or physically abused, call the Texas child abuse hotline at 1-800-252-5400.
A Wichita County jury handed down prison time Friday for a man who sexually abused a 12-year-old girl for months, sharing the vulnerable child who looked on him as a trusted family friend with his girlfriend in their Wichita Falls home.
The jury took about an hour Friday morning to reach punishment verdicts for Shannon Lee Wells, 41, of 40 years in prison for continuous sexual abuse of a child under 14 and three years each for five counts of indecency with a child.
The maximum punishments are life in prison for continuous sexual assault of a child and 20 years in prison for indecency with a child.
It is not yet known if 89th District Judge Charles Barnard will order Wells to serve the sentences consecutively or concurrently. Barnard recessed court about 11:40 a.m. until 1:30 p.m. Friday.
The victim, now a high school student, took the witness stand for the third time to read a moving victim impact statement after the judge dismissed the jury.
“I gave you trust that you betrayed,” she said to Wells. “You took all of my self-worth and crushed it between your fingers.”
She is so angry and so sad.
“I try to be tough, but I want to scream. How could anybody do what you did so easily?” the teenager said. “It’s not fair that I had to go through this again, that I have to go through it at all.”
She said she is easily triggered by a smell, something she sees or even something as small as a position she lies in when she is trying to go to sleep.
“I was literally treated like an object for sex,” she said. “I was 12 years old. You were 36.”
Her grandmother wept while the teenager read her statement.
The teen said she was blinded by manipulation from people she thought she could trust and she thought loved her.
“But what you did to me wasn’t love,” she said. “I struggled with harm and suicidal thoughts for three years because of what I had to endure as a child.”
She feared seeing Wells and his girlfriend, Casey Lee Chapman, when they were free. The teenager did see them at a local store. Subsequently, she suffered a panic attack.
“The way you stared at me for so long. The audacity,” she said to Wells.
The last six weeks have been hard, she said. She has been crying and having breakdowns at school almost every day. She has been eating less.
She has had to pick herself up piece by piece, and she wouldn’t have been able to if it weren’t for Jesus showing her a light in the darkness.
“One day, I’ll be able to completely forgive you. I’ve healed a lot,” she said.
When she finished reading her statement, the teenager went to her grandmother for a long hug.
According to testimony, Wells insisted on having access to the child, inflicting a string of sexual assaults on her. His former live-in girlfriend, Chapman, carried out the first assault after the girl confessed to having a crush on her.
Wells and Chapman, who sometimes babysat the victim and her siblings, sexually abused the 12-year-old from March through December 2018 when she visited the couple’s home.
They plied her with methamphetamine and acted out “Fifty Shades of Grey” fantasies, using handcuffs and rope on the blindfolded child.
More:A shockingly good liar: Teen testifies in sex crimes trial about her pivotal realization
More:Teenager tells jury trusted family friends sexually assaulted her
In May, Chapman, formerly a stay-at-home mom in Wichita Falls and legal sex worker in Las Vegas, pleaded guilty to continuous sexual abuse of a child and was sentenced to 30 years in prison without the possibility of parole.
During closing arguments Friday for the punishment phase of Wells’ trial, the prosecution urged jurors to give him the maximum for the sake of community safety and to send a message.
“As jurors, you have the power to keep a sex offender off the streets as long as possible,” Wichita County Assistant District Attorney Chelsea Carlton said in closing arguments.
“He sought out the most vulnerable in our community, and he’s traumatized her for the rest of her life,” Carlton added.
Wells’ defense attorney, Senior Assistant Public Defender Marty Cannedy, told jurors that minimum sentences would be appropriate for Wells, a hard-working family man who hadn’t been in trouble with the law before.
Cannedy asked the jury to make a just decision.
On Thursday morning, jurors took just 39 minutes to find Wells guilty of one count of continuous sexual abuse of a child under 14 and five counts of indecency with a child.
Jury selection began Monday and concluded Tuesday morning. The prosecution presented opening arguments Tuesday afternoon. Then testimony began with the victim taking the witness stand to wade through painful memories.
After the jury found Wells guilty, the punishment phase began Thursday afternoon. Both the prosecution and defense put witnesses on the stand.
The victim testified about the toll of the abuse on her and her family and how it changed her.
“I was very bubbly, super positive,” she told the jury.
The sexual abuse weighed on her and eroded her mental health.
“I was constantly depressed. I was very negative. I didn’t want to be around people anymore,” the teenager testified. “I wasn’t myself.”
Getting ready for the trial has stirred everything up again.
“It’s been rough. I hadn’t been struggling with sleeping until the cases got brought back up,” she told the jury. “There’s been a lot of days where I’ve gone to school without only two or three hours of sleep.”
It has affected the academics of the usually straight-A student, she told jurors. She does have support from a few teachers who know what’s going on.
Her parents, siblings and grandmother have all felt the impact of what happened to her.
“It’s definitely affected my mom. She felt like she failed,” the teenager testified. “We obviously know it’s not her fault. It’s something you struggle with in these types of cases.”
Two witnesses testified about Wells’ character for the defense, saying he was a good worker.
Trish Choate, enterprise watchdog reporter for the Times Record News, covers education, courts, breaking news and more. Contact Trish with news tips at [email protected]. Read her recent work here. Her X handle is @Trishapedia.
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