Joshua Seth Hawkins, a 34-year-old resident of Palm Coast’s B-Section, was booked at the Flagler County jail Tuesday evening on a count of raping a child over whom he had custodial authority, a first degree felony, and a count of molestation, a second degree felony. If convicted, he faces up to 45 years in prison.
The child, who is in her early teens, reported that Hawkins allegedly assaulted her while she was in the bathroom on Dec. 14, shortly after she and other children, along with Hawkins, had been wrestling playfully in another room. She alleged that he had pulled down her pants after turning off the lights, had his own pants down, and touched her inappropriately.
In a controlled call with a family member–a call recorded by law enforcement without Hawkins’s knowledge–Hawkins blamed the alleged victim, saying that the girl had turned off the lights in the bathroom and “shanked” him, or yanked his pants down, which he had just put on as he was preparing to go to the grocery store. He said the girl had come on to him. He denied either touching her or letting anything inappropriate or out of the ordinary happen between them.
After the bathroom incident the girl called a friend and asked to stay with them until she could inform a parent about what had taken place. In a forensic interview with a Child Protection Team examiner, the alleged victim provided further details of the assault, which led to the sexual battery (or rape) charge. She also alleged that two weeks earlier, Hawkins, unclothed, had been aggressively sexual toward her, and had bought her a “Small Beginner Dildo” from Amazon and a condom.
After Circuit Judge Dawn Nichols signed a search warrant, detectives located the items, seized them for evidence, and learned that Hawkins had ordered them from an Amazon account in his and his wife’s name. The search warrant also enabled the gathering of evidence by crime scene investigators from the bathroom where the alleged “shanking” incident occurred.
When Flagler County Sheriff’s detectives Kathryn Gordon and Hayleigh Prentiss attempted to interview Hawkins, he initially declined, saying it was not an ideal time and he preferred to speak to the detectives in a more controlled setting, with a video recorder, as is his right. He met with the detectives at the Sheriff’s Operations Center on Dec. 17. He described the bathroom incident as entirely initiated by the girl.
“I told her, ‘you got to stop, you got to stop doing that, it’s not cool,’ I said,” he told detectives. He then claimed he said to the girl, “I love you to death,” gave her a hug and told her to “get out I need to change,” he told detectives.
According to his arrest repport, “He purchased the victim a dildo through Amazon to keep her safe while she was exploring sexual acts (masturbation) and proceeded to purchase another sex toy on Amazon to ‘cover it up so my wife thought it was something for me.’” He never told the child’s parent about the incident because he didn’t want to create any “worry.”
He consented to providing a DNA sample to detectives, which was sent to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for processing. FDLE had not provided the results of the DNA test at the time of the arrest, which took place at the Operations Center late the afternoon of Dec. 23.
Hawkins was booked on $75,000 bond.
Keep Flagler Beautiful says
$75,000 bond is nowhere near enouogh.