Man Raped 6-Year-Old Girl in 'Five Below' Store Bathroom: Prosecutor

No, don't swing out.

Deputies slapped the cuffs on Robert Dewey's after a six-year-old girl said he raped her

in the bathroom of a popular store.

Now Dewey's is in jail, and it's not his first brush with the law.

We'll go through the terrifying claims made by prosecutors and how detectives say Dewey's

tricked the little girl into opening a bathroom door.

Welcome to Crime Fix.

I'm Anjana at Levy.

There's a six-year-old girl who went through a really, really scary experience in the bathroom

of a store in Ohio.

What detectives say happened to her with her mom in the store could happen to anyone,

and that's really the terrifying part of this.

A man named Robert Dewey's is in jail, accused of raping that six-year-old girl, and he's

charged as a repeat violent offender, meaning he's done it before.

The case takes us to South Lebanon, Ohio.

That's about 30 miles north of Cincinnati and a mall where the girl and her mom were

shopping.

It was February 6th when this girl and her mom were shopping at the five-below store.

You know, one of those stores where everything's $5 or less, an incident report shows the

call came in at 307 PM, a woman reported that a male touched her daughter in the bathroom.

The next note states, no camera in store, then unknown if the male is there.

After that, unknown what the male looked like.

The daughter is six-years-old, according to the report, and the next comment say they're

in the front of the store.

Now the report goes on to say that the girl didn't see the man at that time, but unknown

who he was, but somehow deputies track down a suspect.

It was after 11 PM that same night that the deputies found Robert Deweyse and took him

into custody at a home nearby.

Robert Deweyse was booked into the jail on a gross sexual imposition charge, but now

the charges have been upgraded after the prosecutor presented the case to a grand jury.

Deweyse now faces two counts of rape, two counts of gross sexual imposition, one count of kidnapping,

and one count of abduction.

There are specifications that come with the charges.

The grand jurors found that Deweyse is a sexually violent predator.

Deweyse has been convicted of sex offenses in Ohio going back to 2007.

In June of 2021, Deweyse was charged with gross sexual imposition of probable cause

affidavit stated on June 4, 2021, an 11-year-old girl and her mother were at Dollar Tree in Lancaster

Fairfield County, Ohio.

The girl reported that the suspect later identified by both the girl and her mother by photo

array as Robert Deweyse followed her and her mother around the store while talking to

himself.

The girl stated while waiting in line, Deweyse began to rub her back and tell her she was

pretty.

Deweyse then began to rub her buttocks in thigh area.

Both the girl and her mom gave a detailed description of the perpetrator.

Lancaster police developed Deweyse as the suspect and the girl and her mom identified

Deweyse as the perpetrator by a photo array.

So this is a similar type of incident, a woman and her daughter reported that Deweyse followed

them around the store and that he began to rub her rear end and thigh area.

Now Robert Deweyse, a 36-year-old man, is accused of sexually assaulting a six-year-old girl

in a family bathroom at a five-below store.

Warren County's prosecutor, David Forenshell, told a local TV station that the girl had

an accident so her mom locked her in that family bathroom of the store and they agreed

on a secret knock for the door.

The mom, according to the prosecutor, went out into the store to buy her daughter new

pants.

But Deweyse had eavesdropped on the conversation and mimicked the knock on the door.

The girl, according to the prosecutor, opened the door and that is when Deweyse walked

in and committed the assault.

But the girl, she started screaming.

It was something she had apparently learned in girl scouts and that alerted people to

what was happening.

Thank goodness.

So I'd like to bring in Chris Clotts.

He represents survivors of both child and adult sexual abuse to discuss this case.

Chris, thanks so much for coming on.

This is a really disturbing case.

This could have happened to any one of us who has kids.

You're walking around a store and your child has an accident and then mom, I guess, according

to what the prosecutor said, mom locks the daughter in the bathroom and says, hey, I'm

going to go get you some new pants.

She's going to go buy the pants at the store, come back to the bathroom and she says, I'm

going to do this secret knock and the prosecutor tells the local news station, WLWT, that this

guy Deweyse, Robert Deweyse, overhears an eavesdrops on the secret knock, does the secret

knock and that's how he gains access to this bathroom.

And then the allegation is that he rapes this little girl.

I mean, what is your response to that as somebody who represents survivors?

I just can't imagine it.

It seems like this happened very, very quickly.

Yeah, internet.

Thanks for having me on.

So this is just one of the many, many unfortunate, disgustingly bad cases where you have a parent

who's trying to do the right thing, who thinks that they're putting their child in a safe

place while they're going just out to the store to try to get some clothes, everybody's

had a child, who's raised kids, who's had an accident at some point and parent tries

to do the right thing, child's locked in the bathroom, secret knock to get back in.

And then you've got this absolute creep who is overhearing or stalking them to figure

out how to get to this little girl.

And so it's just, it's a tremendously bad cautionary tale about even when you think that you're

doing the best that you can do in a circumstance, you really, really need to always, always

be mindful of who's around because you never know when you're on the public setting.

And so this is just a, this is an awful case.

No, yeah, it's a terrible case.

And you really don't know who's walking around, you know, in a store watching you, following

you around and you may not even realize it because you're just a mom in a store walking

around with your child.

And it's really a cautionary tale too to really be aware of your surroundings.

You know, it's, it stinks that in this day and age, you might need to be kind of like

looking over your shoulder, but you kind of have to, to do that and you can get so easily

distracted and be so focused on what you're doing.

Well, listen, you know, you know, kind of looking at it from the standpoint of the mom,

child has an accident, which is an embarrassing thing for the, for the child and you want

the child to feel okay and safe.

And you want to do your instinct as a mom is to try to, you know, fix that situation.

So that is probably something that was, you know, the mom really wanted to go ahead

and get, you know, some, some clean clothes for the child.

I don't know how bad the accident was, but, you know, we've all had kids.

And so we know that that can be really traumatic for the child.

So your focus is on trying to take care of your child and while you're doing that, there's

some predator out there who is like eyeballing y'all to see if you're in a vulnerable position.

And you know, I hate to, I never like to sound paranoid and I always want people to live

their life, but you just, you just have to be super, super aware of your surroundings

and know that there are really bad human beings out there who are not, who are not putting

you or your family or your children first.

They're putting themselves in their absolute, you know, twisted desires first.

And so you just have to be aware.

And so I think the mom was trying to do the right thing.

I think they just had a very sophisticated predator that was lurking around waiting

for an opportunity.

One thing, Chris, that is really creepy about this.

And of course, this Robert Dewey, he's innocent until proven guilty, but there are some

specifications that the prosecutor and the grand jury indicted this guy on.

And it's the fact that he's basically like a repeat offender and they're calling him

a, you know, a violent sexual predator.

And he has convictions for a gross sexual imposition going back to 2007 in the state of

Ohio and he's been arrested in several counties.

The prosecutor says he just got out of prison, you know, he got out of prison like three

days before this happened.

And I want to put up on the screen part of a probable cause affidavit from a 2021 incident

in which he was convicted and served some time.

And it talks about a similar incident in a store.

This was a little bit different.

But in this, it says on June 4, 2021, an 11 year old girl and her mother were at Dollar

Tree in Lancaster, Fairfield County, Ohio.

The girl reported the suspect later identified by both the girl and her mother by photo array

as Robert Dewey's followed her and her mother around the store while talking to himself.

The girl stated while waiting in line, Dewey's began to rub her back and tell her she was

pretty.

Dewey's then began to rub her buttocks and thigh area.

Both the girl and her mom gave a detailed description of the perpetrator, Lancaster

police developed Dewey's as a suspect and the girl and her mom identified Dewey's as

the perpetrator via photo array.

I mean, this is, this is weird.

I mean, this guy has been convicted in the past of lurking around stores, following

girls and their moms around.

So I'm assuming that we may see surveillance video at some point in time of this guy at

the five below, potentially following this woman and her daughter around this five

below store.

I mean, this is really, really creepy.

I would not be surprised at all if once the police and the state attorneys get all

of the evidence that they see that this mom and daughter were followed at some point

around the store and then he saw an opportunity and he listened in on their conversation

and he probably was just pretending to be in the background.

I would not be shocked at all if they actually end up with video evidence that he was actually

following them around or maybe even that he had been in the store following other people

around until he saw an opportunity and he just, you know, kind of was paying attention

and seeing who might be vulnerable.

So it really is shocking, surprising, it's the last thing that you're thinking about

sometimes as a parent and again, we see, I see so many of these cases where parents have

the best intentions.

They're trying to do the right thing and then you have somebody who's just absolutely

sick who has got a motive to do something harmful to a child, sometimes to an adult and

takes advantage of it.

So again, not to sound completely paranoid, but you do, we do have to as parents and responsible

adults be aware of our surroundings and always, always pay attention.

And this guy, Dewey, according to the prosecutor, he'd been out of prison for three days when

this happened on February 6th, I mean, three days, I mean, if that, you know, we're still

trying to get some confirmation on that, the timeline, but if that pans out, that's,

that's shows like a total lack of self control and whatever, maybe treatment this guy was

going through, if he is indeed found guilty of these charges, it didn't take.

Yeah, well, so something else that I was doing a little bit of looking into it before,

before we jumped on to talk about it so I could, you know, know a little bit more about

it and also seems that he had a prior offense where he was on probation and then violated

his probation by committing another sex offense against a child.

So this is not somebody who is, you know, this is their first time, probably not even their

second, third or fourth time, this is somebody that has a adult, appears to have an adult

lifelong problem and it raises the question of as a, as a system, where is the system

breakdown?

Because this guy isn't somebody that you're like having to wonder about, you know, is this

is a good guy or bad guy?

This is somebody who is a bad person who, evidenced by the, the track of the prior criminal

history that I have, you know, seen in, in the media, you know, based on that.

This is not somebody that was a surprise that might be a repeat offender.

As a system, you know, it really raises issues.

What can we do as responsible citizens to make sure that the, the system actually can track

people like this and do a better job because usually when somebody is released from prison,

they're coming out, they're coming into a probation setting, they're, they're going

to come out and meet with a probation officer, they're going to come out and meet with

a parole officer.

Where was the supervision in this particular case and, and why, you know, was he not on

some kind of monitoring?

Why was he not on some type of, you know, direction that he not go to certain places?

I know maybe stores would not be a prohibited place, but, you know, there seems to be a systemic

failure with somebody who has this kind of track record and it's something that we really

need to ask about and talk to our legislators and representatives and our law enforcement

people about what do we do concerning people who have this type of track record?

It's, it's, it shouldn't be happening time after time after time after time.

This little girl though should be commended for how she handled this.

Apparently, she started screaming.

It was something she learned in scouts.

You know, I mean, this had to just be terrifying for her.

Sure.

And to her credit.

So, you know, maybe through the year scouting has gotten a bad, you know, kind of a bad

knock because there's been some cases with, you know, the scouting program, but I do want

to say that wherever she learned this, this skill set about being vocal, it's a, it's

a, it's a program that is taught to young people about how to protect themselves when

they're in a situation exactly like this is called the Roar program R O A R is an acronym.

And if she learned it through scouting, that's great.

I wish more children were given this information, but Roar stands, it's R O A R, the R stands

for remember private, it's her private, the O stands for it's okay to say no because

sometimes children don't know it's okay to say no to a grown up.

The A stands for always tell secrets to a responsible or a safe adult.

And then the R is for raise your voice, which this little girl obviously did and to her

credit, she was able to stay present of mind enough to remember what she had learned.

And you know, thank goodness that she learned that because it probably ended up saving

her from something much, much worse happening.

Yeah, most definitely, I mean, just awful, and this should be that, you know, I hope

people who see this talk to kids they know about it and maybe teach them the Roar, you

know, just screaming in that, you know, if you're, if you're cornered like this scream

and, you know, just make as much noise as you can, that's what they recommend.

Yeah.

You know, Chris, thank you so much for joining me, just a really terrifying, horrible

case could have happened to anybody.

Thank you so much.

Yeah.

And if I could just, if I could just close by saying one thing for the parents out there

that are watching talk to your children about these types of things, I know that it's

uncomfortable to talk with your kids about potential for sexual abuse or inappropriate

touching.

But we all in this day and age need to have conversations with our kids that are hard

about it is okay to say no, you need to have three to five safe adults that you can tell

secrets to in your life and give, empower your children to know that they haven't done

something wrong.

It's the grown up that has done something wrong and then it's safe for them to talk to

you about it.

Most definitely.

Thanks again, Chris.

Thank you very much.

Good to see you as always.

Now, let's take a look one more time at that body camera footage of Robert de Weece

in custody.

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Have a seat.

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Yup.

Time to walk up that big glass door.

First room on your left if it's not occupied.

Have a seat in that little round chair.

For now, Robert de Weese remains in custody at the Warren County Jail in Ohio.

His next court date has not yet been determined.

And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix.

I'm Antonette Levy.

Thanks so much for being with me.

I'll see you back here next time.