Michael Wayne Jennelle is a 53-year-old Palm Coast resident. He’s been at the county jail for the last year and a half. Earlier this week Circuit Judge Dawn Nichols set his trial on charges of raping and molesting a child for Jan. 13, absent a plea. No plea appears forthcoming.
Jennelle faces a capital felony, three life felonies and a second degree felony, all related to the alleged abuse of a girl–his granddaughter, whom he adopted as his daughter–from the time she was 7 to when she was about 10. The prosecution is not seeking the death penalty. The alleged crimes predate the enactment of a new but unconstitutional law enacted in Florida 14 months ago that reinstates the death penalty for individuals convicted of the rape of children younger than 12. If convicted, Jennelle would be immediately sentenced to life in prison. The judge would have no discretion.
There is no DNA evidence, no witnesses, no corroborating evidence. The case will rely almost entirely on the child’s testimony, including two, one-hour long video-recorded interviews with Dwayne Sturgill, a licensed therapist, when the child was around 10. (She is now 12.) She described to him the innumerable times Jennelle had abused her in different ways to pleasure himself, saying several times that she’d lost count of the number or times this or that kind of abuse had happened.
“She did a very good job of speaking clearly and explaining the things that occurred to her,” Sturgill said in court. She did not merely adopt what Sturgill would ask: in such interviewers, therapists are trained not to ask leading questions, leaving it as open as possible for the child to fill in blanks. “In both interviews, I did very little talking. She did a very good job of expressing her thoughts and communicating what she wanted to communicate with me,” he said, with diagrams and a doll helping.
“She’s extremely descriptive about acts that the defendant did to her, actually saw the defendant doing to himself,” Assistant State Attorney Melissa Clark told the judge, though the judge already knew that: she’d watched the interviews. “Even a dog was involved. I mean, it was extremely descriptive.” (The child described how when Jennelle would ejaculate on the ground, he’d make his dog lap it up.)
As Nichols judge was ruling on a series of pre-trial motions, including granting the state’s motion to play both video interviews to the jury and allow the defense to depose the child, who is expected to testify, she termed the interviews quite compelling.” The judge looked at Jennelle at the defendant’s table. “I’m assuming that you love your granddaughter. Is that a fair assumption?” the judge asked Jennelle.
“Very much,” Jennell replied.
“And although you didn’t see the interview, these interviews and these depositions are incredibly emotional and trying for children,” the judge said. “You want to put her through that?”
“I didn’t do it. So yes,” Jennelle answered without hesitating.
So trial will proceed.
The girl has a younger brother, now 9. They are the biological children of Jennelle’s daughter. Michael Jennelle and his wife V.J. were married in Nov. 5, just months after the child’s birth. It’s not exactly clear when they took custody of the two children, or became their caretakers, though at one point Michael Jennelle pursued his daughter for child support and won. He and his wife separated in February 2017, though they adopted the two children in March 2022. In November 2022, they both filed for divorce from each other–she in Virginia, he in Palm Coast.
“It is in the best interest of the minor children that both parties have shared parental responsibility with the father having a majority of the time sharing and mother having frequent and reasonable visitation,” Michael Jennell’s petition read.
According to a motion by the prosecution, the Department of Children and Families on Nov. 30, 2022 got an anonymous tip[ that the girl was being sexually abused by Jennelle. At the time the girl had been living with Jennelle, whom she called Poppy, at the Pine Lakes Apartments in Palm Coast. A DCF investigator went to that apartment and interviewed the child. She denied it. (The child had also told Sturgill in the video interviews that she was scared of her Poppy, that he at times bribed her with money to keep her quiet, and that he threatened her, in case she revealed anything, by telling her that it would all be her fault anyway–all tactics common to child abusers.)
DCF dropped it.
The very next day–according to Michael Jennelle in court papers–V.J. forcibly removed both children from an elementary school in Palm Coast after “causing a major campus disruption,” then “secreted them to the state of Virginia without the father’s consent and is refusing to allow the father to have contact with the children.”
Three months later, V.J. called authorities in Tazewell, Va., and in Flagler County to report the alleged abuse her adoptive daughter had been suffering at Michael’s hand.
The defense signaled in court papers what its strategy would be: that the child is lying, and that the accusations may have been motivated by the divorce. The defense claimed in a motion that “during the adoption process, the child [] met with and spoke to staff members of the Community Partnership for Children (known as case workers) and discussed her current living situations and any issues she was dealing with, and was attending counseling at the same time with the CPC for previous issues related to her birth parents.” In the adoption case file, there are “notes from the case workers that deal with the credibility of [the girl] and her truthfulness.”
Then-Judge Terence Perkins ordered the case file released to the attorneys.
In a he-said-she-said case, not to mention a case of this gravity with accusations hanging on the child’s word, the defense has no choice but to argue that the alleged victim is lying. He faces similar charges in Virginia.
