The Herald, Sharon, Pa.

Local News

August 27, 2008

Violent sexual predator gets stiff prison sentence

By Patrick W. Connelly

PINE TOWNSHIP — A Pine Township man a social worker said was driven by pornography and unable to stop sexually assaulting children was sentenced on Wednesday to at least 47 1/2 years in prison.

Jeffrey Craig Bowser, 46, of 1320 W. Main St., was sentenced by Mercer County Court of Common Pleas President Judge Francis J. Fornelli, who also ruled him a violent sexual predator.

Bowser pleaded guilty in February to molesting a teenage boy and a mentally disabled girl. He also pleaded to charges he videotaped the acts and taped children using the bathroom and shower in his home.

Bowser told the children, who were both under the age of 13 when the sexual assaults began, he would kill them if they told anyone, their mother told Fornelli before the sentencing.

The deviant behavior may stem from an incident where Bowser himself was molested as a 10-year-old boy, said Molly Wagner, a social worker for the state sexual offenders’ assessment board who evaluated Bowser in Mercer County Jail.

The incident “socially isolated” him and spawned sexually-related criminal activity, she said.

Bowser began stealing pornography at age 15 and was caught stealing women’s underwear while a student at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, Ms. Wagner said.

A hobby of collecting adult pornography soon turned into an interest in child pornography that urged him to find ways to make his own, she said.

Bowser was released in 1998 from jail after serving time on separate charges and began molesting children the next year, she said.

He began videotaping the girl, who is now an adult, when she was 11 years old and would masturbate in front of children when they spent the night in his home, Ms. Wagner said.

Bowser created an elaborate storage system of the video footage and also saved child pornography he found online, she said.

“It was (like getting) a high for him,” Ms. Wagner said. “It was a compulsion. He was unable to stop.”

Fornelli told Bowser he couldn’t understand how someone who was abused himself could “turn around” and do it to others.

“You’re a prime example of a man who has destroyed himself morally and in other ways,” Fornelli said.

Bowser was sentenced on charges of involuntary sexual assault, possession of child pornography, aggravated indecent assault, sexual abuse of children, involuntary deviant sexual intercourse, filming deviant sexual intercourse, corruption of minors and invasion of privacy.

The maximum sentence on those charges could run to 114 years, Fornelli said.

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