Man convicted of sex offense with minor

By Linda Cicoira

A two-day jury trial could have ended with a mistrial in Northampton Circuit Court on Tuesday after the young victim’s father heard his daughter testify against a Cape Charles man, who was later convicted of a sex offense involving the preteen.

The parent, who isn’t being named to protect the identity of the girl, banged loudly on a table in the upstairs lobby of the courthouse before running down the stairs in a rage during the lunch break. Many of the jurors were on their way out of the building or were in the parking lot when the incident occurred.

The irate man was stopped right outside the courthouse front doors. Other spectators said an unidentified woman held the exit door shut for a time, which deterred the man from reaching the defendant, 58-year-old Charles Walter Robbins, of Cherrystone Road, who was already further out in the parking area.

Deputies, other officials, and family members gathered around the father to restrain and calm him down. He was told not to come back to the courthouse for the remainder of the trial.

Defense lawyer Jamison Rasberry told the court he was “weighing whether to ask for a mistrial. The defendant does not want that,” Rasberry said. “He wants to go forward.” So, the trial continued. The attorney complained that six jurors who were in the parking lot turned, saw the incident, and laughed about it. He said he wondered how that could affect the verdict.

The girl, who is now 14, testified through a closed-circuit television to minimize the trauma of being questioned in court. She stopped several times to compose herself and wipe tears from her eyes and face. She said Robbins showed her multiple inappropriate pictures of himself when she was nine or ten and rubbed her inappropriately on her thighs and under her shirt on her back when she was 12. She said she didn’t tell anyone what happened right away because she was too scared.

Commonwealth’s Attorney Jack Thornton said the girl “had no reason to fabricate these things … she would rather have been in a thousand million places than in that room being questioned…”

Robbins was convicted of taking indecent liberties with a child, which is a felony, because he showed her the photographs, which an investigator later found on his cell phone.

He was acquitted of the other three charges that included acting lasciviously when he touched the girl. Robbins was remanded to jail to await sentencing, which was set for December. He denied all the accusations.