52-Year-Old Palm Coast Man Charged In Sexual Abuse of a Woman Since She Was 12

Leon Norman Wiley is a 52-year-old former resident of Palm Coast’s R Section now living in an apartment at 1025 South Beach Street in Daytona Beach. He was required to vacate the Palm Coast property because of injunctions against him by two of its occupants: his step-daughter and his wife, who filed for divorce last month.

On Friday, Wiley was arrested and charged with sexual battery–or rape–of a custodian over a victim between the age of 12, a first degree felony with a potential for life in prison, and sexual battery of a victim between the ages of 16 and 17, a second degree felony. He was also charged with tampering with a witness, as he’d allegedly offered the victim $20,000 not to speak with police.

Flagler County Sheriff’s deputies were alerted to the case when the alleged victim, now 21, contacted deputies to report that Wiley was violating his injunction–which is in effect until February 2021–and out of fear that he was attempting or making inappropriate sexual contacts with her 7-year-old daughter: the 21-year-old woman told deputies she did not want to see happen to her daughter what had been happening to her, at Wiley’s hands, since she was 12. She did not report the incidents until recently out of fear. (The alleged victim does not share any of Wiley’s names.)

Her interviews with law enforcement and recorded statements by Wiley revealed that Wiley caught sight of the victim at church when she was 9 years old. According to his arrest report, he “wanted” her from on and decided he would date her mother to get at the girl. He said he never wanted to marry the girl’s mother as it would complicate matters, but did so anyway. In the recordings, which included audio and video, Wiley “did not deny” having sex with the girl since she was 12. When she was 17, he had a friend allegedly come over to the Palm Coast house to have sex with her as well. The girl, according to the arrest report, got pregnant “approximately seven (7) times during those incidents.” Each time, Wiley would take the girl to a clinic in Orlando or Ft. Lauderdale to get an abortion.

One of the pregnancies took place when the girl was 13. She kept the baby girl–whom she told deputies she suspected of being abused as well by Wiley, though for now detectives could not determine the veracity of that allegation. Wiley himself in recordings denied ever being inappropriate with the younger child, though he admitted to twice falling asleep while watching porn on his phone, and waking up to see the child doing so. It isn’t clear whose child the younger girl is, though Wiley has agreed to submit a DNA test, for which a warrant was being secured. While the family was living in Volusia and after the birth of the girl, Wiley is alleged to have directed several men to have sex with his step-daughter.

The recordings include evidence that Wiley attempted to convince his step-daughter and to move in with him at his Daytona Beach apartment, along with her daughter, and drop all injunction and other charges against him, telling her he’d provide her large sums of money if it kept him out of jail, and once promising to give her a card with $20,000 on it.

The sheriff’s office announced the arrest in a release issued at midday today. Wiley was arrested at Walmart on Friday and was interviewed for hours by detectives, making several admissions. His booking photo at the Flagler County jail shows him with a beaming smile. The investigation is continuing. Additional charges are pending.

“This is still an ongoing investigation but our detectives were able to obtain significant and strong evidence against him,” Sheriff Rick Staly was quoted as saying in the release. “I hope the judge throws the book at him and he spends a long time in prison thinking about his actions and what he as done to these children.”