Mar 2, 2024 By Mike Jones 3 min read

An Elco man who was convicted of sexually abusing a young girl for more than a decade and impregnating her twice when she was a teen was handed what will likely be a life sentence.

Jerome Julian Stewart offered no apology to the girl or her family and didn’t acknowledge the abuse when he chose not to speak just before Judge Brandon Neuman ordered him to serve 69 to 138 years in prison during his sentencing hearing Friday in Washington County Court of Common Pleas.

State police said the abuse dated back to 2009 when Stewart sexually assaulted the 8-year-old girl and continued to do so up until his arrest in September 2021.

A jury convicted Stewart on Nov. 17 of numerous charges that included rape of a child, statutory sexual assault, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a child, aggravated indecent assault of a child, endangering the welfare of children and corruption of minors. He was acquitted of evidence tampering.

Neuman went well above the standard range for the charges, and in effect gave 40-year-old Stewart a life sentence. Stewart is facing similar accusations from several other children, and has at least five other cases still pending.

In a written statement read aloud to the court, the victim said her childhood was stolen from her by Stewart, who “became my worst nightmare.” The girl was impregnated twice by Stewart, once when she was 13 and suffered a miscarriage, and then again when she was 15 and gave birth to a child. The abuse took place in several locations over the years, including in West Pike Run, California, Elco, Washington and Brownsville.

The victim is now an adult, but still suffers from the effects of the sexual assaults with the loss of her education, lack of friends, drug abuse and the hardship of raising her abuser’s child, according to her grandmother.

“Jerome Stewart took her childhood from her,” the victim’s grandmother said in a written statement. “Jerome Stewart is a monster.”

Assistant District Attorney Rachel Wheeler asked Neuman to go above the standard range with a request of a sentence of 57 to 114 years in prison. But Neuman went even higher than that due to the length of the abuse and the effect it had on the victim.

Wheeler said in her arguments that the victim is a strong woman for being able to testify at trial, but she still suffers from the “trauma” of the abuse.

“(She) has gone through a life most of us cannot imagine,” Wheeler said. “She will suffer the effects of it for the rest of her life.”

Stewart’s court-appointed attorney, Jacob Mihalov, claimed his client was abused as a child, but he admitted that an expert the defense had hired in an attempt to mitigate the sentence “did not bear fruit” since the findings would not have helped their case.

Meanwhile, Wheeler noted that Stewart declined an opportunity to speak at his sentencing in which he could’ve shown remorse or apologized.

“He’s refused – utterly refused – to take responsibility for his actions,” Wheeler said. “He took her future. He took her childhood.”

Stewart has been held at the Washington County jail without bond since his arrest in September 2021. The other five cases against him are currently making their way through Washington County Court of Common Pleas, although it’s not known when any of them will go to trial.