Man wrongfully accused of sexual assault at church settles with Port Royal for $500K
The Town of Port Royal reached a half-million dollar settlement with a Beaufort man wrongly accused of sexual misconduct with a 4-year-old in a Sunday school class, marking the end of a four-year legal battle.
Joel Iacopelli of Beaufort, along with his wife, Marianne, sued the town of Port Royal in 2015 after Iacopelli was arrested. Town police had investigated a mother’s complaint that her young child was sexually assaulted while in Iacopelli’s care at Community Bible Church in Port Royal.
In the suit, Iacopelli accused Port Royal and two officers of “turning a blind eye” to contradictory evidence and slandering him through what he said was a wrongful arrest and malicious prosecution, as well as unreasonable search and seizure of his property.
Iacopelli maintained his innocence throughout the investigation, and a county magistrate judge, citing lack of probable cause, dismissed the charges against him about a month after his arrest. Both Iacopelli and his lawyer, Jared Newman, declined to comment for this article.
Van Willis, town manager for Port Royal, said in an email that the suit was “a disputed claim involving numerous parties,” noting that federal civil rights claims against the town had been dismissed by court order. All other pending claims were resolved through the December 27, 2019, settlement, which will be paid by the South Carolina Insurance Reserve Fund. Willis did not return two voicemails and an email requesting further comment.
The settlement stands as one of the largest related to claims brought against a Beaufort County police department in recent years, according to claims data from the Insurance Reserve Fund. No party admitted liability in the release signed by the Iacopellis and obtained from Port Royal through a public records request.
The Beaufort County Department of Social Services, a branch of the state government also named in Iacopelli’s lawsuit related to its inquiry into Iacopelli and his family, paid an additional $30,000 as part of the settlement. A spokesperson for DSS did not comment on the suit and said the Insurance Reserve Fund handled the case.
4-year-old’s accusation leads to arrest
The investigation that led to Iacopelli’s arrest and imprisonment stemmed from a report a mother filed with the Port Royal Police Department on June 29, 2015. The mother said the child had reported being touched in her private area, according to a judge’s order filed in federal court in Charleston.
On July 10, police arrested then-44-year-old Iacopelli at his home for criminal sexual conduct in the first degree with a minor under 11 years of age. At a bond hearing two weeks later, he was released from the Beaufort County Detention Center on bail, required to wear a GPS monitor and avoid contact with minor children other than his own.
Iacopelli, who at the time had four young children, was fired from his job as an insurance agent at UnitedHealthcare in Beaufort because of media coverage of the arrest, he said in his lawsuit.
Port Royal Police contacted DSS, who sent workers to Iacopelli’s residence while he was in jail and threatened to place the children in foster care if his wife Marianne didn’t sign a “safety plan,” according to excerpts from a deposition she gave, presented in court filings.
In filings, DSS said it sent a letter notifying the Iacopellis on Aug. 17, 2015, that the case was determined to be “unfounded,” but Iacopelli’s lawyer wrote in a motion that this letter wasn’t received.
Conflicting evidence in police investigation
Iacopelli cooperated with officers, continually denying the accusation against him. Documents filed in litigation surrounding his lawsuit point to inconsistencies in the mother’s story and potentially contradictory evidence that wasn’t revealed when officers obtained arrest warrants.
During a preliminary hearing, Port Royal police investigator Robert Bilyard testified that the child who reported the assault later told her father she had made up the story.
Bilyard also said the child’s mother said she dropped her off at Sunday school in Iacopelli’s care around 9:15 a.m.
But home surveillance footage presented by the defense at the hearing showed Iacopelli feeding chickens in his yard at that time. Surveillance footage from the church showed him arriving shortly after 11 a.m., and Bilyard had statements from two members of the church and volunteer records corroborating this, according to court documents.
These statements weren’t revealed to the magistrate who issued the arrest warrants or an assistant solicitor who advised Bilyard. The officer “omitted many details that could undermine a finding of probable cause,” wrote a federal judge in an order reviewing whether Iacopelli’s constitutional rights were violated.
After his arrest, Iacopelli submitted DNA, which was excluded as a possible match to DNA found on the child’s sweater, according to a Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office forensic analysis report filed in court. No evidence of saliva was found on the child’s clothing.
“There was a lot of praying, a lot of alone time and just trying to get through that process,” Iacopelli previously told the Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette in an interview about his time in detention. Members of his congregation stood by him during the arrest and prosecution.
Settlement to be paid from insurance fund
Willis, Port Royal’s town manager, confirmed via email that all $500,000 of the settlement will be paid by South Carolina’s Insurance Reserve Fund, a state-run insurance agency for public bodies. The fund will also cover legal costs associated with the four years of litigation.
When public agencies face a lawsuit like Iacopelli’s, they notify the fund, which appoints lawyers to handle the case. Agencies pay premiums to the fund, much like they would any private insurance company.
The settlement dwarfs others reached by Beaufort County law enforcement agencies in recent years. In December of last year, for example, the Town of Bluffton reached a $20,000 settlement with former Beaufort resident Claraleanna Lockett related to excessive force claims she made after a traffic stop where an officer broker her car window.
Law enforcement insurance rates will rise this summer, reported the Post and Courier, as the number of lawsuits against police and the number of resulting settlements has increased.
This story was originally published March 6, 2020 at 4:45 AM.
