Closing arguments made in case of wife of child molester

www.pennlive.com:CARLISLE — A Cumberland County jury went into deliberations Wednesday, the third day of trial for Mildred M. Brown, 72, of Newville. 

Brown faces four counts of recklessly endangering another person. The prosecution argued that she knew her husband, Robert Brown, also 72, repeatedly molested four children at their house, and she failed to stop the abuse or report it.

Robert Brown was convicted last year, and sentenced in April to 40 to 120 years in state prison. But Mildred Brown testified at trial that she was not home when any of the abuse occurred, and she was unaware of it until her husband’s arrest.

In his closing arguments, Brown’s attorney, Shawn Dorward, told the jury that Robert Brown was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and nobody knew that he was a child molester — including his wife of more than 30 years.

This case is not about what Mildred Brown should have known, Dorward said.

“This is about Mildred Brown being married to a monster for 34 years, trusting him, having faith in him, and not suspecting he was molesting these children over and over and over again,” Dorward said.

During Robert Brown’s trial, Mildred Brown was a witness for the prosecution, Dorward pointed out, and testified then that she knew nothing about the sexual assaults until her husband was arrested, and started sending her graphic letters from prison describing what he had done.

“Looking back, we can talk about all the red flags that should have been noticed,” Dorward said. But Mildred Brown trusted her husband, and was not coming home at night, and looking for questionable activities, Dorward said.

But in her closing arguments, Senior Assistant District Attorney Emily Provencher said she has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Mildred Brown was aware of the abuse and is guilty of endangering the four children.

“It’s our position that, yes, she knew,” Provencher said. “Maybe not in graphic detail, but she knew they were in a position of danger, and she did nothing to help them.”

Provencher said one of the victims would gyrate on Robert Brown’s lap, but Mildred Brown did not see this as suspicious, and did not report it either, when the same victim viewed a pornographic website with her husband.

“I said to her, ‘You wouldn’t call a child viewing pornography molestation?’ and she said she would call it abuse,” Provencher recalled Brown’s testimony from Wednesday. “But she still did not report it.”

Mildred Brown told the police in an interview that she would not know who to report abuse to if it happened, but Provencher pointed out Brown worked as a school bus driver, and knowing how to report abuse is part of the training.

And Provencher said Mildred Brown made contradictory statements throughout her testimony, and in a taped interview with the state police, in which she admitted to knowing about the abuse, then recanted her statement.

“She’s full of excuses,” Provencher said. “She’s lying, and she cannot keep her story straight.”