Trial begins for Flossmoor man charged in 2013 kidnapping and sexual assault of 6-year-old Homewood girl
A 16-year-old former Homewood girl testified Wednesday about being kidnapped from her home 10 years ago and sexually assaulted before being left on the stoop of a home in Flossmoor.
“When I was 6-years-old, I was taken from my home,” the girl testified, explaining in detail how she was sexually assaulted.
Her testimony came on the first day of a jury trial for Christopher Young, a 56-year-old Flossmoor man charged with predatory criminal sexual assault and aggravated kidnapping.
Young’s attorney, Tony Thedford of Thedford Garber Law in Chicago, said his client does not fit the description of the person the girl described when she was questioned in 2013.
The girl, who said she was sleeping on a mattress in her living room Dec. 28, 2013, said she remembers being taken by an man who she hadn’t seen before. She recalled being driven in a car to a house she had never been in.
“I remember asking if I was dreaming and a voice said ‘Yes, go back to sleep,’” she said. As she spoke from the witness stand, she never looked over at the defendant’s bench except to point out Young in the room. Her shoulders touched her ears with discomfort over some of the direct questions and she swiveled slightly in her chair.
Prosecutors say Young took the girl from her home in Homewood, brought her to his home in Flossmoor, sexually assaulted her in his bed and then carried her to the stoop of another Flossmoor resident.
Young was not charged until November 2019, and police had no major suspects until semen and DNA evidence collected from the girl and her clothing found a match, prosecutors said in opening statements.
Police had said DNA recovered from the child did not match any person in police records when it was tested in June 2014 by the Illinois State Police Division of Forensic Services.
But in 2019, a detective retrieved bottles from Young’s trash to collect more of his DNA, prosecutors said. Detectives then traveled out of state to where the girl, who was then 12, lived and had her pick out a photo from a lineup. After the girl identified Young as the person who she remembers taking her from her home, law enforcement retrieved more DNA evidence from Young through a cheek swab, prosecutors said.
The odds of these DNA tests being a match for the wrong person are astronomically low, the state argued.
The girl confirmed under cross examination Wednesday by Thedford that back in 2013, she said the man who attacked her had blue eyes, was bald and had a beard. Young did not match that description at the time, Thedford said.
Thedford also said the girl never spoken about this attack with her parents and only spoke to detectives once in 2013, once in 2019 when she was asked to pick out someone in a photo lineup and then once again on Wednesday. The state countered by saying this is not a topic children are comfortable talking about with family.
Flossmoor resident Peter Gabel testified he found the child on his doorstep at about 2 a.m. Dec. 28, 2013. Gabel said the child recalled being carried out of the home where she was sexually assaulted, being brought outside and going over a set of train tracks before being dropped off at his house, he said.
Gabel, who called the police and returned the child to her parents, said there are train tracks by his house that match the girl’s description.
Testimony in the trial was to resume Thursday at the Cook County courthouse in Markham.
