William B. Glasscock v. State

Court of Appeals of Texas·Decided August 11, 2020·No. 06-19-00225-CR·Published

Opinion

In The

Court of Appeals

Sixth Appellate District of Texas at Texarkana

No. 06-19-00225-CR

WILLIAM B. GLASSCOCK, Appellant V.

THE STATE OF TEXAS, Appellee

On Appeal from the 241st District Court Smith County, Texas

Trial Court No. 241-0709-19

Before Morriss, C.J., Burgess and Stevens, JJ.

Memorandum Opinion by Justice Burgess

MEMORANDUM OPINION

A Smith County1 jury found William B. Glasscock guilty of one count of continuous sexual

abuse of R.C., a child under fourteen years of age, as charged in the indictment in this case.2 The trial court sentenced Glasscock to imprisonment for life. On appeal, Glasscock argues that (1) the evidence supporting his conviction is legally insufficient; (2) the trial court erred by admitting a list of pornographic websites accessed by Glasscock on his computer, marked as State’s Exhibit 2, together with testimony related thereto; and (3) the trial court erred by admitting testimony regarding Glasscock’s previous failure to appear for court proceedings. We affirm the trial court’s judgment because we find sufficient evidence to support Glasscock’s conviction, any error by the trial court in admitting State’s Exhibit 2 was harmless, and the trial court did not err in admitting testimony regarding Glasscock’s previous failure to appear for court proceedings. I. Factual and Procedural Background Because Brandy and her husband worked odd hours, their children, R.C. and Brent, frequently stayed after school and overnight at the nearby home of their grandmother, Emily, and her seventy-year-old husband, William Glasscock. The children stayed there so often that they had their own rooms.

1 This case was transferred to this Court from the Twelfth Court of Appeals in Tyler as part of the Texas Supreme Court’s docket equalization program. See TEX. GOV’T CODE ANN. § 73.001. We are unaware of any conflict between the precedent of the Tyler court and the precedent of this Court on any issue relevant to this appeal. See TEX. R. APP. P. 41.3. 2 To protect the victim’s privacy, we have assigned pseudonyms to the victim and her relatives, other than Glasscock. See TEX. R. APP. P. 9.10(a)(3); McClendon v. State, 643 S.W.2d 936, 936 n.1 (Tex. Crim. App. [Panel Op.] 1982).

At a family party on or about April 1, 2018, R.C. told a small group of family members that Glasscock had been inappropriately touching her by sticking his hand inside her pants and that he had been doing so for four to six years. The first person R.C. told was her friend’s mother, Debra. Debra, who was also Glasscock’s niece, initially did not believe the allegations because R.C had exhibited attention-seeking behavior in the past. Debra testified that, when R.C. made the accusation against Glasscock, she told Emily, who said she would “handle it.” Nevertheless, neither Debra nor Emily reported R.C.’s allegations about Glasscock to the police.

On April 12, 2018, Brandy learned of the abuse through several text messages with R.C.

Brandy testified that R.C. told her that Glasscock had been touching her private parts but that she did not want to talk about it and refused to go into a lot of detail. When Brandy asked R.C. if Glasscock had ever put his fingers inside her, she said, “No.” Later that day, when Brandy spoke with R.C. in person, the child said that Glasscock would “grab her. She would try to get out of the house and he would grab her and start putting his hands in her pants.” Brandy testified that the story R.C. told her had not changed.

According to Brandy, R.C. could not remember the first time it happened, but estimated that the abuse had been going on since she was about ten years old—”maybe four to six years.” She also said that the last time it happened was in late January 2018, the night their dog, Sarge, died. Brandy informed her husband what R.C. had said and then contacted the Smith County Sheriff’s Office. The sheriff’s office interviewed R.C. and her family and began an investigation. Glasscock was later arrested and eventually charged with continuous sexual abuse of a child under

fourteen years of age. At the time of his arrest, Glasscock told the officers that he knew this was coming.

Jennifer Subin performed a forensic interview of R.C. at the Children’s Advocacy Center.

Subin testified that R.C. was in a state of “tentative disclosure” regarding what happened and was “very reluctant to talk.” Subin also testified that R.C. was “putting internal pressure on herself” due to her feelings for and relationship with Glasscock. Subin described R.C. as “shutoff, withdrawn,” and “very quiet, very meek and mild” to the point that it was “difficult to even hear her tell . . . what had happened.” R.C. avoided giving details of the abuse by saying that “it was the same way every time.” Subin testified that such avoidance is common among kids who have suffered repeated sexual abuse. Subin explained, “It’s hard for them to separate those events in their mind when it’s something that’s routinely happening to them.” Subin added that this concept is known as source confusion. She explained that, if someone had been abused from the time of elementary school through age thirteen, she “would expect them to have kind of a confused or jumbled timeline of events.”

Although R.C. did not remember providing this detail to Subin, Subin testified that R.C.

said Glasscock had repeatedly penetrated her with his fingers. Subin said R.C. was “pretty clear” and “adamant about what had happened” and that the only time penetration did not occur was the night their dog died. Although R.C.’s timeline of when the abuse started and what happened was vague, she was able to provide details about “location, how it felt, things that were going on in the room, things that were going on at night before and after the event, specifically the last events.”

Subin testified that R.C.’s story was consistent throughout the interview and that she saw no indication that the story was fabricated.

Emily testified that she and Glasscock slept in different bedrooms and that Glasscock’s room was “at the far end of the house” near R.C.’s bedroom. According to Emily, R.C. claimed that Glasscock would go into her bedroom at night and touch her and that, during the day, he would “catch her going out the front door and put his hands down her pants and panties and touch her.” R.C. also told her that it had happened several times but that the first time she remembered it happening was about the time of her elementary school photograph. Emily testified that the school photo that R.C. referred to was taken in 2014, when R.C. was ten years old. Emily never suspected the abuse, but she did remember R.C. often sleeping in her bed with her and asking if she was a light sleeper.

Emily testified that she did not call the police because “part of [her]” believed that the person she had been married to since 1994 “could never have done this.” Even though she and Glasscock continued to live in the same house, they did not speak to one another for several days after R.C.’s outcry. Emily added that, when she, Glasscock’s sister, and Emily’s brother-in-law confronted Glasscock on April 10, 2018, and asked if the allegations were true, Glasscock went into his bedroom and closed the door and “never said a word, nothing, no denial, no nothing.” She testified that she spoke with him again later and asked him if he had touched R.C. and that Glasscock said, “I did it.” When she asked why he did it, he told her, “To feel the love.” He also told her he had been molested by an uncle and that he had been dealing with that for much of his life.

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