Assault verdict coming

Jurors expected to decide today whether friend of girl's mom sexually abused teen

Web posted October 29, 1998

By Margaret N. O'Shea
South Carolina Bureau

AIKEN -- An Aiken County jury is expected to decide today whom to believe -- a tearful 15-year-old girl who says her mom's ``on again, off again'' lover performed oral sex on her against her will, or the Beech Island man who says he didn't.

Keith Gainey, 42, admitted that he showed up in the middle of the night looking for the girl's mother, who wasn't home, but said he didn't molest anybody. Mr. Gainey said he found the front door ajar at 3 a.m., lights on and the girl, then 14, asleep in the living room.

He said he woke her and asked where her mother was, but apologized and left when the girl said her mother was out on a date.

But the girl testified that she heard a noise, and when she opened her eyes, Mr. Gainey was standing over her.

``I woke up and there was a man in the house, and he wasn't supposed to be there. My mother wasn't home,'' she said.

Sobbing, she told the jury that she thought Mr. Gainey was leaving as she crawled into bed. But ``he came in the room with me and started pulling the blankets off.''

She said he pawed her and ``kissed me in my private area.'' She said she ran, pulling on underwear as she fled, but Mr. Gainey followed and tried again.

Then he left. Her mother wasn't home and would not be until 7 a.m., so the girl said, ``I laid down on the couch and cried myself to sleep.''

While the girl described that night -- May 31, 1997 -- her younger sister, 11, burst into tears and fled from the courtroom.

Mr. Gainey claimed his late-night visit after a night out with friends was about the younger child. He said she recently had learned that he might be her father -- something he and the mother had known since a DNA test during her last divorce indicated her husband was not.

He told the jury that he had never pursued a real relationship with the child because he thought she didn't know. But she did, and in a letter and telephone calls begged him to visit.

The mother told him the child was disturbed and withdrawn, bursting into tears at school.

``It bothered me,'' he said. So lately he had tried to visit more. On that night, he said, he wanted to ask for visitation the next day so the child could spend time with his children.

Prosecutor Patricia Corey questioned his timing.

``Didn't you think at 3 o'clock in the morning that people would be asleep?'' she asked.

``Knowing (the mother), no,'' he said, explaining that she frequently partied late. ``I thought that would be a good time to catch her at home.''

``I was fixing to get married,'' he said, ``and you just don't go into a marriage and then tell your wife you possibly have another child (she didn't know about).''

She told the court her first reaction, when her older daughter told her Mr. Gainey had assaulted her, was a feeling of betrayal. Then she got angry. She drove to her ex-husband's house to tell him, then took her daughter to the police station.

Defense attorney Bill Weeks said the case against Mr. Gainey was flawed.

No one took the girl for a medical exam that might have isolated testable saliva, and no one checked her room for clothing fibers.

The clothes she described to police were unlike those he and his friends all say he wore that night, down to jeans and snakeskin boots instead of the shorts and white tennis shoes the girl described.

One witness, David Tyler of North Augusta, said he remembered the boots vividly.

``I was giving him a hard time about them. I told him he looked like a redneck,'' Mr. Tyler testified.

The case will be handed to the jury to decide today whether Mr. Gainey is guilty of committing a lewd act on a minor and second-degree criminal sexual conduct.

Margaret N. O'Shea can be reached at (803) 279-6895 or scbureau@augustachronicle.com.