Alabama man found guilty of rape for making his girlfriend have sex with “gay” son
Sean Cole thought he could make his son perform sexual acts with an adult female in order to "straighten him out"
An Alabama jury has convicted a man and his girlfriend for rape after he convinced her to have sex with his then-11-year-old autistic son because he feared the boy would grow up to be gay.
Sean Cole, 29, and Khadeijah Moore, 22, could face life sentences in prison after they were convicted for rape, sodomy, and sexual abuse of a child younger than 12, reports The Birmingham News.
The attack happened during the week of Thanksgiving 2016, when the boy went to visit his father in Huntsville, according to prosecutors.
After Cole found his son in a “compromising position” with another boy, he told Moore to perform sex acts on him in order to “turn” him straight. The couple also forced the boy to perform sex acts on Moore.
“It was solely that [Cole] was worried that his son was gay or might become gay,” Tim Douthit, the Madison County assistant district attorney who prosecuted the case, argued in court. “There was no evidence he had a sexual attraction to his son or children. He just though he could, for lack of better words, ‘straighten him out.'”
The boy later returned to his mother’s house in Georgia, where he began asking her questions that made her suspicious. Upon further questioning, he told his mother what happened at his father’s house, and she filed a complaint with Huntsville police.
Moore is considered a fugitive because she didn’t show up for trial after being released on bail. Madison County Circuit Judge Allison Austin issued a warrant for her arrest. Nonetheless, despite her absence, court-appointed lawyer Reta McKannan argued that Cole had forced Moore to perform the sexual acts.
“My client did everything at Sean Cole’s direction,” McKannan told The Birmingham News. “That doesn’t make it OK. That doesn’t make it right. As sorry as I am that my client is in this much trouble, I respect that jury for what they had to do.”
According to Douthit, the boy, now 13, still doesn’t understand that the incident was not his fault. He says that when a forensic interviewer asked the boy what was going through his mind during the rape, he responded: “I was thinking why is my dad doing this to me. Dad said to tell no one. I failed him — I just told you.”
Cole and Moore are scheduled to be sentenced on May 24.
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