A Flagler County Grand Jury on Nov. 7 indicted 22-year-old Giovanni Gabriel Curtis, a Palm Coast resident and U.S. Army recruit, on a life felony rape charge involving a child younger than 12, when Curtis was himself 13. He also faces a molestation charge. He has confessed profusely to his mother, to a detective and to his victims, to whom he has also proffered unbidden apologies and regret.
Curtis was arrested last weekend at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, where he was stationed, after being questioned there by Flagler County Sheriff’s Detective Kathryn Gordon in September following a report in May that he had allegedly abused several children in the same home over several years, starting when he was 11, and the youngest child was 3.
The Flagler County charges involve two children who were allegedly abused when one of them was between 5 and 6, and the other was 10, when Curtis was 13 and attending Indian Trails Middle School, where he was enrolled between January 20 and May 29, 2017.
The family moved often, living in Georgia, Maryland and Florida, among other places. The charges he faces are based only on the alleged incidents that took place in Palm Coast. He may face additional charges in other jurisdictions.
His alleged victims describe repeated and elaborate assaults. When an adult family member confronted him, Curtis told her that someone had “messed” with him when he was younger, and he “thought it was normal,” according to his arrest report. The adult was confronting him about what one particular child had told her had occurred starting when she was 3 and Curtis was 11, when he would take all sorts of inappropriate and assaultive liberties with her.
In a child protection team interview, the child victim “began to visibly shake and explained that she did not want to say” what he had done to her. Instead she wrote down a description of the incidents, some of them involving Curtis covering himself and her with a blanket, apparently to dissimulate him and her from siblings who were in the same room, and to proceed to abuse her, at times causing her physical pain.
Questioned by Gordon, he allegedly confessed to abusing five children starting from the time he was 9 until he was 13. The location of the abuse is redacted from the report, but appears to refer to Palm Coast or Flagler County, the one jurisdiction the Sheriff’s Office could investigate with a local indictment in view. Based on his reported confessions, Curtis spoke freely with the detective, at one point conceding that he knew he was possibly causing pain to one of the children, who would look visibly uncomfortable to him. He specified that it occurred at the Flagler County residence. In some cases, a child would resist him.
A search of his two cell phones revealed notes, one of which stated: “When my mom won custody over me I was angry, scared, and confused and so when I went to live with [redacted] I was awful to them. I was used to getting all the attention and being spoiled that I didn’t care about them or even know how to. I would bully them, have them take the blame for things that I would do, and I molested them. I would do these things to them until I was 14/15.”
A note reveals how one of the children told his mother what he’d done. “Yesterday I spoke to my mom about everything and came clean to what I had done to everyone,” the note, entitled “Mom, Dad, and Family,” states. “I sexually abused [], I would treat everyone like trash, tell [] and [] that they were weak and gay and would tell them about how mom is crazy and how I don’t love any of y’all…”
To one of his victims, he described some of the inappropriate things he did, some of them involving a vacuum cleaner, and wrote: “By me being inappropriate and rude and violent towards you, making you feel unsafe or bad around me, 1 learned that I genuinely hurt and broke your heart and I’m sorry that I ever did that because you did not deserve any of it.”
To another victim, he wrote: “I’m writing this out to first and foremost apologize for everything that I have done to you and taken from you […] I’m sorry that I stole your innocence and that I am the reason for your trauma […] In Georgia and Florida when grandma came to stay with us for a while, it reminded me of my trauma and I didn’t know how to deal with it and it triggered something in me and I went right back to being fucked up and hurting y’all.”
In his notes he expresses regret, and unlike the near-totality of adult perpetrators of sexual abuse of children, appears at no point to shift the blame to his victims, instead insistently assuming blame, as he did in a note to the younger child: “I’m sorry that I’m a coward piece or shit who hurt you to the point that you don’t value or respect yourself and like I said I hope that you’re able to find closure in this and can learn to love yourself and grow from it cause none of it is your fault, it’s mine.”
His mother was concerned about Curtis causing himself harm after he confessed to her, and informed authorities to that effect.
A running thread of willful and voluntary expiation in his written confessions and spoken confessions to the detective and to his mother strongly suggest that he will not be fighting the charges. He does not appear inclined to put his victims through more trauma in a trial, nor is the prosecutor assigned the case, Assistant State Attorney Melissa Clark, interested in placing children on the witness stand when she can avoid it. More likely, he will seek a plea, if the state offers one.
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