Jurors deliberating in child abuse trial

Aug. 3—Jurors will resume deliberations Tuesday in the trial of a Ghent man accused of sexually abusing his stepgranddaughter.

The trial of Richard Chambers started Wednesday in Raleigh County Circuit Court Judge H.L. Kirkpatrick's courtroom. Jurors heard from the victim, the victim's mother, a child abuse expert from Charleston and West Virginia State Police forensic experts and investigators.

On Monday, Raleigh Prosecuting Attorney Ben Hatfield and Raleigh Chief Public Defender Stacy Fragile presented closing arguments to jurors around 2 p.m. Monday.

Chambers was arrested in late 2018 on 21 charges related to the alleged sexual abuse of his 7-year-old stepgranddaughter, after the girl's mother found a sexually explicit video that the girl had made.

Police allege that Chambers pointed a gun at the victim during one alleged abuse incident.

The abuse allegedly occurred over a four-year period, while the girl lived in a house on the same plot of property that Chambers owned. The victim's mother testified that she had become ill, leading the child to spend more time at Chambers' house.

The child's mother discovered sexually explicit videos on the child's phone and made a report with West Virginia State Police in 2018, leading police to arrest Chambers.

On Thursday, Hatfield called Dr. Joan Phillips to testify as an expert witness about her examination of the victim, called T.B., on Dec. 11, 2018.

Defense attorneys objected to Phillips as an expert witness because of previous statements she had made that a physical injury in child sexual abuse will not always be present.

Kirkpatrick permitted Hatfield to call Phillips as an expert witness but noted the defense's objection for purpose of Chambers' appeal.

Phillips has served at Charleston Area Medical Center as a medical director of the Children's Advocacy Center since 2004 and has been certified by the American Board of Pediatrics in 1985. Since 2009, she has been certified in the subspecialty of child abuse pediatrics. The National Academy of Pediatrics and another group awarded her a national award in Washington, D.C., and she is a contributing editor to a magazine published by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Phillips told Hatfield that she had examined T.B. after the girl had already spoken to Just for Kids, an advocacy organization that conducts forensics interviews of child victims. During her physical examination of T.B., Phillips said, she did not find any injuries to the child's genitalia.

Just for Kids referred T.B. to CAMC, which is the typical process, she added. Phillips did not participate in collection of the disclosure statement, she told Chambers' attorney.

T.B.'s mother told Phillips that she had found a video of T.B. masturbating and that T.B. had, in the past, had irritation in her genital region, Phillips said.

"The mom, in the (medical history) report, did say that there had been times that she had seen this redness, or rawness, but when I saw (T.B.), there was none," Phillips testified, under questioning by Hatfield.

The physician said that medical literature shows that in 95 percent of child sex abuse cases, physical damage to the child is only found within 96 hours of the abuse. She said that in all but five percent of sex abuse cases, on average, the child's body heals and there is no physical evidence of the abuse.

"I did not see direct evidence of abuse, but, again, the disclosure is important," she said. "That's part of it.

"You have to take it in totality, that you have a disclosure.

"Again, in 95 to 98 percent of the time, I would expect a normal exam in a non-acute setting," she said.

Phillips said that, when investigating child sex abuse, the physical exam is only one part of the evidence. A finding of no physical evidence does not override the victim's statement to police or other forms of evidence of abuse in a case that did not occur within the last 96 hours, she explained.

"If there is a disclosure, the fact that she has a normal exam does not discount that disclosure."

Under questioning by Chambers' attorney, Phillips reiterated that the lack of finding on a physical exam would not be extraordinary and that it would not cancel other forms of evidence.

In sex abuse cases, only pregnancy and/or the presence of semen are definitive considerations, she added.

Phillips then cited a study of a small group of 36 girls who had become pregnant after being sexually abused. Scientists found that only two, or six percent, had definitive findings of direct penetration during a physical exam. The rest had no findings or inconclusive findings, she added, to illustrate the point.

Based on the information made available to her, Phillips told defense attorneys, her opinion is that T.B. was sexually abused.

State forensic investigators were able to retrieve segments of the sexually explicit video, which the victim's mother testified that she had deleted. However, they were unable to retrieve the entire video.

State investigators ran a physical extraction on the Android cell phones in the case, which permits investigators to examine the hard drive of a device and to obtain deleted files, as long as the device has not overwritten the deleted file to clear up space on the hard drive.

Hatfield said Friday that investigators were able to get images from electronic devices in the case, using the Israeli cyber forensics program Cellebrite in 2021, but had been unable to retrieve the same images in 2019.

On Friday, Billy Gardner, assistant professor of cyber forensics and security at Marshall University, said that it would not be abnormal to have missed the data during an earlier search, depending on the cell phone, the software running on the phone, the manufacturer of the phone and Cellebrite's ability to address the physical hardware.

Updates by Cellebrite would most likely explain why images were available in 2021 but not 2019, Gardner told Hatfield, who took office in 2020.

"In case the file system is deleted, it's not gone from the hard drive," explained Gardner. "That data lives on the device until it is (overwritten)."

Gardner said he had not examined the electronic devices in the case but had looked at the ports, a virtual location where networking communication starts and ends.

Jurors began deliberating Monday and will continue deliberations on Tuesday.

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