Circuit Judge Dawn Nichols this afternoon granted the State Attorney’s request to deny 47-year-old Kristopher Henriqson the right to bond out at any point before his trial or the disposition of his charges, including a capital charge of allegedly raping his step-daughter over several years, when she was between 9 and 12. The capital charge makes him eligible for the death penalty, should the State Attorney seek it.
The girl, who is now 12, reported the alleged assaults to a school counselor earlier this month, within 24 hours of the last assault. She then had to be Baker Acted for her safety–the involuntary commitment in a psychiatric unit of individuals threatening self-harm. That was one of the elements Assistant State Attorney Melissa Clark submitted to the judge in her argument for Henriqson’s continued incarceration.
Henriqson is also a felon twice over: he has a federal felony for fraud for which he served two years in prison, and a subsequent felony for selling pot, for which he served almost a year in state prison in Florida. He has been a Flagler County resident since 1980.
“This is a person that acted as kind of like a stepfather role,” the prosecutor said as she was asking the lead detective questions in testimony today. “He lived in the home with her?”
“Yes,” the detective, Adam Gossett, said.
“And fair to say that that’s when much of the abuse was taking place, when mom was off to work and he was alone watching the children?”
“Yes.” It took place at least twice a week. The detectives conducted a controlled call between the mother, alongside detectives, and Henriqson at the other end, when he was unaware that law enforcement was listening and recording. The child had already disclosed details of the assaults and abuse to a forensic interviewer in a Child Protection Team session. To set up the controlled calls, the detectives came up with a ruse: that the child had a miscarriage at school, and the fetus had been recovered. Henriqson still denied having abused the girl in the first call. That changed in the second call.
“He admitted to just fooling around and kissing initially, and then it progressed,” Gossett said, then admitting to further, more grave abuse, until the mother asked him whether, if a DNA test were conducted, her DNA would be detected on his penis. He said it would. But he maintained that he’d been assaulting her only since she was 11, and did what predators almost always do when confronted with such accusations: he blamed the girl.
Henriqson, in by-now familiar jail garb, was a few feet from Clark as she made her argument to the court for no bond: “Obviously, we’ve got substantial evidence that the defendant did exactly what he’s been accused of,” Clark said. “You have not only this young child disclosing these horrible things. You have the defendant admitting to it, frankly, blaming the child for what had happened, which is just reprehensible. But nonetheless, it’s what he did. But judge our concern is that, obviously, he’s a danger to the community. He’s committed horrific offenses on a little girl over the course of three years, multiple offenses under the guise of being someone that cared for her. The young lady obviously has suffered physically, emotionally from this, quite a bit of trauma. We have concerns not just that he’s a danger to the community, but obviously he’s also potentially a flight risk. Yes, he may have appeared in court before for other things. But he wasn’t facing mandatory life in prison and potentially the death penalty.”
The assistant public defender, Courtney Davison, did not have much with which to counter Clark’s arguments, and by then, if not far sooner, the judge had likely made up her mind, noting that she finds “a substantial probability that the defendant committed the offense.” It was no bond “across the board.”
Henriqson faces a capital felony count, a first degree felony and second degree felony, assuming the State Attorney’s Office doesn’t add charges. He also faces drug charges.
john says
Thank you Judge he deserves to be thrown in jail for life.