Guilty on all charges for man who raped young sisters for years

Talk about outrageous.
Troy E. Foster, 40, lured two young sisters into years of sex, including once having oral sex in a bunk bed and another time engaging both girls in oral sex at the same time.

Yesterday, his behavior returned to haunt him, when a Common Pleas jury forewoman read guilty-after-guilty verdicts on charges of rape and involuntary deviate sexual intercourse.

Foster hung his bald head, rubbing it with his hands.

Assistant District Attorney Catharine Thurston, speaking after the verdicts, gave this account:

Foster, most recently of Wilmington, but who had lived in East Germantown at the time, was dating the girls' mother and baby-sat the girls for her.

Starting in 1995, when both girls were about 8 years old and in third grade, he started assaulting them. The sisters, now 20 and 21, are 10 months apart in age.

The older sister testified during the five-day trial that it all started one day when she was roughhousing with Foster. He reached under her nightgown and touched her vagina. He then sat her on the kitchen counter and rubbed his penis against her vagina, she said.

Within a week, he was having "full-blown sex," with her, Thurston said. Foster then also began having sex with the younger sister that same year.

Once when the girls were around 13, Foster performed oral sex on one sister while the other sister gave him oral sex.

Another time, Foster was standing at the girls' bunk bed, helping the older sister, who was on the top bunk, with her homework while the younger sister, on the lower bunk, performed oral sex on him.

The older sister testified that at the time she was angry because "I knew he wasn't concentrating" on the homework, Thurston recalled her testifying.

When the girls' brother, who is about a year or two older than his sisters, walked in on the sex acts one day, Foster began paying all three children so they wouldn't tell on him, Thurston said.

The siblings testified to times when Foster would spend his income-tax refunds on them, buying them gifts and taking them to Forman Mills for a shopping spree.

The younger sister testified that when she was 15, she asked Foster for $2 to go to the store, but in order to get the money, she had to have sex with him.

Thurston said the sisters tried telling their mother about the sexual acts when they were 12. When "mom confronted him, he said he must have been drunk and didn't remember doing any" of the acts.

James Owens, the assigned detective in the police Special Victims Unit, said : "While mom was out working paying the bills, she trusted him with the kids. They felt if they said anything, bad things would happen."

The sexual abuse lasted until the girls were 15 and 16 years old.

Around that time, the mother said she wanted to marry Foster,Thurston said. The older brother advised her not to, telling her that the sexual activity the girls previously told her about was still happening. After the mother spoke to the girls individually, she reported the rapes to police.

Thurston said it took investigators a while to find Foster, who she contended fled to Wilmington after he was told by family members that detectives were looking for him.

The FBI Fugitive Task Force arrested him in Wilmington in August 2005.

Defense attorney Doug Dolfman, who represented Foster with attorney Tobi Russeck, contended that Foster had gone to Wilmington because he had relatives living there.

"It's very hard to fight a case where so many accusations take place over two young girls over such a long period of time," Dolfman said.

The jury of eight women and four men deliberated for about six hours over two days. When it delivered its verdict shortly after noon yesterday, the panel found him guilty of all charges, including rape of a child, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a child and aggravated indecent assault.

Judge Amanda Cooperman revoked Foster's bail and ordered him taken into immediate custody. Foster faces sentencing on May 15.