Bluffton man found guilty of raping ex-girlfriend’s young daughter
A former Bluffton resident was sentenced to over two decades in prison after a jury found him guilty of sexually assaulting his ex-girlfriend’s young daughter over a period of years.
James Ethridge Jones, 45, was convicted Tuesday of criminal sexual conduct with a minor in the first and third degrees following the one-day trial at the Beaufort County Courthouse. He received a 25-year prison term for the first-degree charge but was credited for 978 days already spent in jail, reducing his sentence to about 22 years.
Prosecutors said Jones began sexually assaulting the victim, now 23, while he dated the girl’s mother and lived with them in the Bluffton area. The abuse began when she was 6 years old and continued until she was 14.
The victim took the witness stand on Tuesday for about an hour and 15 minutes, recalling instances during that eight-year period when Jones would climb into bed with her, touch her inappropriately and sexually assault her. He also regularly made sexually charged comments about her body when the two were alone together, she testified.
The jury, made up of four women and eight men, deliberated for about 45 minutes before finding Jones guilty on both felony counts.
Jones was arrested in April 2019 about three months after the victim reported his history of abuse to police.
Assistant Solicitor Monica Main, who prosecuted the case, said in her opening statement she had no DNA or video evidence to present to the jury — primarily because Jones worked hard to hide the abuse from others.
“These are cases that happen behind closed doors. They’re not meant to come to light,” she told the jury. “You’ll hear from the victim ... she’s going to tell you the secret that the defendant hoped would never come out.”
Main asked the jury to return a guilty verdict based on the victim’s testimony and those of her family members, who reported a dramatic shift in the girl’s demeanor in the years the abuse took place.
“If you believe her, you believe it happened,” Main said in her closing argument. “And that’s enough to find him guilty.”
Jones’ public defender Jacob McFadden argued there was no evidence of the crimes beyond the victim’s testimony, and that law enforcement failed to investigate further by obtaining phone records or searching the houses where the alleged assaults happened.
“The entire case is founded on the statement of a single person,” McFadden told the jury during his closing argument.
He said the victim provided prosecutors with a “very inconsistent account” of the crimes by altering her count of how many assaults occurred across two different meetings.
Prosecutors asked Circuit Court Judge Eugene P. Barr Jr. to give Jones a 30-year sentence, the maximum allowed under South Carolina law for his first-degree conviction.
If you or someone you know has been affected by sexual assault, 24-hour help can be found by calling Hopeful Horizons at 843-770-1070 or by calling the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673.
