DADI.org

Wednesday, November 20, 2002

HEADLINES

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Mother guilty of molestation

• Her young sons' testimony convinces jurors of an Albany woman's guilt.

TIM WESSELMAN
STAFF WRITER
The Albany Herald

ALBANY — An eight-woman, four-man jury took only an hour Tuesday to find Virgie Anne Holmes guilty of three counts of child molestation, two counts of child cruelty and one count of incest.

Holmes, 29, faces up to 120 years in prison — a maximum of 20 years on each of the six charges. Her sentencing hearing is set for Nov. 26 at the county jail.

Although free on bond before her conviction, Holmes was placed in jail immediately after the verdict and will remain there while awaiting sentencing.

The woman's two sons have been placed in their biological father's custody.

The jury was moved by Holmes' testimony that her grandfather, Lloyd Phelps, began molesting her when she was 7 years old. However, the jury foreman said in an interview that members of the panel believed her two sons' reports that she had had sex with her grandfather in their presence and had fondled one of the children.

Although Holmes had signed a statement — typed for her by an investigator — in which she admitted the incest, the defendant took the stand on Tuesday and tearfully denied all the charges against her.

"We didn't believe her," said the jury foreman, Leonard Reed. "We believed (her two sons) over her."

The demeanor and disposition of the boys during their videotaped statements, recorded in June 2000 when they were 8 and 10, was convincing, Reed said. The jury foreman said the boys' statements appeared voluntary, rather than prompted.

Prosecutors bolstered the videotaped evidence by bringing the older child into the courtroom to testify in person. The boy has muscular dystrophy and is confined to a wheelchair.

Holmes testified that as a single mother with diabetes, she was sometimes forced to turn to Phelps for help. She said she was too intimidated by him to report his sexual advances toward her.

"We sympathize with her situation. It was an awful, awful situation, and we hope she will get some help, rather than just jail. But that wasn't up to us," Reed said. "We were just asked to decide if she was guilty or innocent.

"She had a choice, and her choice was to let this happen."

Holmes was charged in the case along with Phelps, a 77-year-old Baconton man who last year was ordered confined to the state hospital in Thomasville until he is mentally competent to stand trial.

Phelps was convicted in 1985 on charges he had sex with Holmes when she was a minor, according to court records.

Defense attorney Craig Mathis told jurors in opening arguments he would introduce evidence that Holmes, while perhaps competent to stand trial, was mentally impaired. Prosecutors blocked attempts to introduce detailed information on her mental health history.

Prosecutors began the trial Monday with allegations she allowed her two sons to watch her have sex with Phelps, a man the children said had sex with a dog and a cat, which he flushed down a toilet.

Mathis told jurors Holmes is the victim of Phelps, who is a "monster."

In closing arguments, Assistant District Attorney LaRae Moore said the abuse did not excuse Holmes from returning to Phelps' Baconton home with her children, where they were abused.

Phelps was "the same monster Velma Holmes continued to go around ... continued to bring her children around," Moore said.

Tim Wesselman can be reached at (229) 888-9351.

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