A 45-year-old man is facing 24 felony charges after being accused of sexually assaulting a 6-year-old girl for nearly two years while the two lived together.
Jesse Louis Cowles Jr. was living with the girl between January 2008 and December 2009 in York County, said Capt. Jimmy Richardson with the York-Poquoson Sheriff’s Office.
During that time, Cowles, whose last known address is in Williamsburg, would inappropriately touch the girl on a weekly basis, according to a criminal complaint filed against the suspect in York-Poquoson Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court.
The complaint shows the sexual assaults began when the girl’s mother left her at the residence.
The girl moved out of York County after her seventh birthday, court documents show, and the sexual assaults stopped.
YPSO received a report of the incidents in July 2014, and a “thorough investigation” followed, Richardson said.
Cowles was charged with 12 felony counts of object sexual penetration and 12 felony counts of aggravated sexual battery May 21 after he turned himself into the Virginia Peninsula Regional Jail.
Cowles is scheduled to appear in York-Poquoson Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court for a hearing at 8:30 a.m. June 4.
