Perry v. State

Christopher Perry (defendant), his wife Mary, and her mother allowed Christopher’s close friend Robert Young to move in with them and Christopher and Mary’s three children, even though they knew Young was a sex offender convicted of molesting his stepdaughter. Evidently, Christopher, his wife, and Young had threesomes together, and the family depended on Young financially. The Perrys allowed Young to sleep in their eight-year-old daughter E.P.’s bedroom and bathe her. When the Department of Children and Families (DCF) received a report that an adult male was sleeping with E.P., the Perrys signed a safety plan agreeing that Young would have no unsupervised contact with their children. But the Perrys continued to allow Young to sleep in E.P.’s bed. After DCF received a second report, an interview with E.P. confirmed that Young was sexually abusing her in multiple ways. Investigators saw a lock on the outside of E.P.’s bedroom door that E.P. said her parents used to lock her in her bedroom with Young. Mary later admitted that she had seen Young sexually abusing E.P., told her husband about it, but that neither of them did anything to stop it. Instead they continued denying that Young slept with E.P. in her room and falsely told investigators that he slept on the couch. Christopher was convicted for capital sexual battery, lewd molestation, felony child neglect, and conspiracy with his wife and mother-in-law to commit capital sexual battery on E.P. Christopher appealed on multiple grounds, including arguing that no direct proof showed an agreement between him, his wife, and his mother-in-law to allow Young to molest E.P., as required to support the conspiracy charge.