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Jury convicts Nanticoke man of sexually assaulting girl

Times Leader - 9/28/2022

Sep. 28—WILKES-BARRE — A Luzerne County jury deliberated for approximately 20 minutes before finding Jayson S. Montanez guilty of sexually assaulting a girl numerous times.

Montanez, 36, of West Church Street, Nanticoke, faced a two day trial before President Judge Michael T. Vough on two counts each of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, aggravated indecent assault, indecent assault and one count each of corruption of minors and a felony sex offense.

The jury convicted Montanez on all counts Wednesday after his attorney, Charles G. Ross Jr., and assistant district attorneys Jarrett Ferentino and Shana Messinger presented their closing arguments earlier in the morning.

The girl was 6-years-old when Montanez began sexually assaulting her in 2012 until 2014. She and her brother, a witness to the assaults, testified Tuesday.

During closing arguments, Ross told the jury the children were coached by their mother who had a relationship with Montanez.

"Those children were coached," Ross said to the jury. "This case is insufficient, physically impossible."

Ross told the jury Montanez had not seen the children since June 2014.

Prosecutors alleged Montanez committed the sexual assaults from 2012 to 2014.

"We heard allot of horrible, horrible testimony," Ferentino said during his closing argument. "These witnesses were not coached, they are children.

"They had to come into this courtroom — teenage children, they had to talk about the most embarrassing details of the worst thing that happened in their lives," Ferentino said.

Testifying in his own defense, Montanez denied he ever sexually assaulted the girl who he said fabricated the allegations by being coached from her mother. He denied he ever showed the girl sex toys and child pornography and denied he took showers with the girl.

Montanez was initially charged by county detectives Charles Balogh and Robert Lehman in November 2014, at which, the case was dismissed on appeal by the Pennsylvania Superior Court due to hearsay testimony — known at the time as the Ricker Rule, given at the preliminary hearing held in January 2015.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court modified the Ricker Rule in July 2020 resulting in the case being dismissed by the Superior Court in November 2020.

Detectives refiled the case against Montanez in March 2021 that led up to his two day trial this week.

Court records say Montanez is serving a state prison sentence of 18 months to three years imposed in March 2019 by Vough after admitting he possessed child sexual abuse materials on his cell phone.

Montanez said the child pornography was sent to him on one of his social media accounts and he believed he had deleted the images. He is listed as a sexual offender on the state police Megan's Law website and is required to register his address for 15 years.

Vough will sentence Montanez Jan. 3.

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