LEBANON, Ohio —

A Deerfield Township man accused of sexually assaulting children had his bond set at $300,000 Thursday.

John "Ben" Reynolds, 53, is charged with one count of rape and one count of gross sexual imposition. Detectives with the Warren County Sheriff's Office said they've identified three victims who were known to Reynolds.

According to court documents obtained by WLWT, the children are currently between 13 and 14 years old. Two are girls and one is a boy. Documents state the sexual assaults started in 2016 and took place at multiple locations including Liberty Center, the KOA campground in Lebanon, a local YMCA and Reynolds' home.

The children told social workers who interviewed them that Reynolds would buy them items such as jewelry, clothes, stuffed animals, toys and candy, according to court documents.

The investigation into the assaults began after the mother of a child reported Reynolds to Butler County Children Services in April.

During Reynolds' arraignment Thursday, his attorney, Edward Perry, said his client was a family man.

"He is married, judge. He's been married for 29 years, and he's got three grown children," Perry said.

Perry said his client moved to Warren County after graduating from Southern Illinois University in 1992.

"He came to Warren County and made Warren County his home, and he's been here ever since. He was married here. He purchased and bought a home in Mason, Ohio. Him, his wife and his family have been in that house in Mason for the last 22 years," Perry said.

Perry said Reynolds has been employed as a software developer, most recently by the Cincinnati Financial Corporation.

"He suspects that, because of his arrest, that job is no longer available to him," Perry said.

Detectives said Reynolds was involved with a Boy Scout troop out of Mason, but they say the children are not associated with the scouts.

Reynolds is scheduled to be back in Lebanon Municipal Court on June 2 for a preliminary hearing.

“That '70s Show” star Danny Masterson was led out in handcuffs from a Los Angeles courtroom Wednesday and could get 30 years to life in prison after a jury found him guilty on two of three counts of rape at his second trial, in which the Church of Scientology played a central role.

Masterson's wife, actor and model Bijou Phillips, gasped when the verdict was read and wept as he was taken into custody, while a group of family and friends who sat stone-faced behind him throughout both trials.

The jury of seven women and five men reached the verdict after deliberating for seven days spread over two weeks. They could not reach a verdict on the third count, that alleged Masterson raped a longtime girlfriend. They had voted 8-4 in favor of conviction.

Masterson, 47, will be held without bail until he is sentenced. No sentencing date was set.

“I am experiencing a complex array of emotions — relief, exhaustion, strength, sadness — knowing that my abuser, Danny Masterson, will face accountability for his criminal behavior,” one of the women, whom Masterson knew as a fellow member of the church and was convicted of raping at his home in 2003, said in a statement.

A second woman, a former girlfriend, whose count left the jury deadlocked, said in the statement: “While I’m encouraged that Danny Masterson will face some criminal punishment, I am devastated that he has dodged criminal accountability for his heinous conduct against me.”

A spokesperson for Masterson declined comment, but his attorneys will almost certainly appeal.

After a deadlocked jury led to a mistrial in December, prosecutors retried Masterson, saying he forcibly raped three women in his Hollywood Hills home between 2001 and 2003. They told jurors he drugged the women’s drinks so he could rape them. They said he used his prominence in the church — where all three women were also members at the time — to avoid consequences for decades.

“We want to express our gratitude to the three women who came forward and bravely shared their experiences," Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón said in a statement after the verdict Wednesday.

Masterson did not testify, and his lawyers called no witnesses. The defense argued that the acts were consensual, and attempted to discredit the women’s stories by highlighting changes and inconsistencies over time, which they said showed signs of coordination between them.

“If you decide that a witness deliberately lied about something in this case,” defense attorney Philip Cohen told jurors, going through their instructions in his closing argument, “You should consider not believing anything that witness says.”

The Church of Scientology played a significant role in the first trial but arguably an even larger one in the second. Judge Charlaine F. Olmedo allowed expert testimony on church policy from a former official in Scientology leadership who has become a prominent opponent.

The church said in a statement after the verdict that the “introduction of religion into this trial was an unprecedented violation of the First Amendment and affects the due process rights of every American. The Church was not a party to this case and religion did not belong in this proceeding as Supreme Court precedent has maintained for centuries.”

Tensions ran high in the courtroom between current and former Scientologists, and even leaked into testimony, with the accusers saying on the stand that they felt intimidated by some members in the room.

Actor Leah Remini, a former member who has become the church’s highest-profile critic, sat in on the trial at times, putting her arm around one of the accusers to comfort her during closing arguments.

Remini said on Twitter that the two guilty verdicts in the retrial are “a relief. The women who survived Danny Masterson’s predation are heroes. For years, they and their families have faced vicious attacks and harassment from Scientology and Danny’s well-funded legal team," she posted. "Nevertheless, they soldiered on, determined to seek justice.”

Video below: A-List celebrities associated with the Church of Scientology

The alleged harassment, which the church denies engaging in, is the subject of a civil lawsuit filed by two of the accusers.

The Scientology statement said “there is not a scintilla of evidence supporting the scandalous allegations that the Church harassed the accusers.”

Founded in 1953 by L. Ron Hubbard, the Church of Scientology has many members who work in Hollywood. The judge kept limits on how much prosecutors could talk about the church, and primarily allowed it to explain why the women took so long to go to authorities.

The women testified that when they reported Masterson to church officials, they were told they were not raped, were put through ethics programs themselves, and were warned against going to law enforcement to report a member of such high standing.

“They were raped, they were punished for it, and they were retaliated against,” Deputy District Attorney Reinhold Mueller told jurors in his closing argument. “Scientology told them there’s no justice for them. You have the opportunity to show them there is justice.”

The church called the “testimony and descriptions of Scientology beliefs” during the trial “uniformly false.”

“The Church has no policy prohibiting or discouraging members from reporting criminal conduct of anyone — Scientologists or not — to law enforcement,” the statement said.

Next week Olmedo will hold a hearing to determine how a lawyer who represents the Church of Scientology had evidence that the prosecution had shared with the defense. The evidence involved links that the lawyer accidentally included in an email to Mueller.

The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they’ve been sexually abused.

Testimony in this case was graphic and emotional.

The two women whose testimony led to Masterson's conviction said that in 2003, he gave them drinks and that they then became woozy or passed out before he violently raped them.

The third, Masterson’s then-girlfriend of five years whose count left the jury deadlocked, said she awoke to find him raping her, and had to pull his hair to stop him.

Olmedo allowed prosecutors and accusers to say directly in the second trial that Masterson drugged the women, while only allowing the women to describe their condition in the first trial.

Masterson was not charged with any counts of drugging, and there was no toxicology evidence to back up the assertion.

The charges dated to a period when Masterson was at the height of his fame, starring from 1998 until 2006 as Steven Hyde on Fox’s “That ’70s Show” — the show that made stars of Ashton Kutcher, Mila Kunis and Topher Grace.

Masterson had reunited with Kutcher on the 2016 Netflix comedy “The Ranch,” but was written off the show when an LAPD investigation was revealed in December 2017.

The Iowa Attorney General's Office has paused its practice of paying for emergency contraception — and in rare cases, abortions — for victims of sexual assault, a move that drew criticism from some victim advocates.

Federal regulations and state law require Iowa to pay many of the expenses for sexual assault victims who seek medical help, such as the costs of forensic exams and treatment for sexually transmitted infections. Under the previous attorney general, Democrat Tom Miller, Iowa's victim compensation fund also paid for Plan B, the so-called morning after pill, as well as other treatments to prevent pregnancy.

A spokeswoman for Republican Attorney General Brenna Bird, who defeated Miller's bid for an 11th term in November, told the Des Moines Register that those payments are now on hold as part of a review of victim services.

“As a part of her top-down, bottom-up audit of victim assistance, Attorney General Bird is carefully evaluating whether this is an appropriate use of public funds,” Bird Press Secretary Alyssa Brouillet said in a statement. “Until that review is complete, payment of these pending claims will be delayed.”

Victim advocates were caught off guard by the pause. Ruth Richardson, CEO of Planned Parenthood North Central States, said in a statement that the move was “deplorable and reprehensible.”

Bird's decision comes as access to the most commonly used method of abortion in the U.S. plunged into uncertainty following conflicting court rulings on Friday over the legality of the abortion medication mifepristone. For now, the drug the Food and Drug Administration approved in 2000 appeared to remain at least immediately available in the wake of separate rulings issued in quick succession.

U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Texas, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, ordered a hold on federal approval of mifepristone. But that decision came at nearly the same time that U.S. District Judge Thomas O. Rice in Washington, D.C., an appointee of former President Barack Obama, essentially ordered the opposite.

The extraordinary timing of the competing orders revealed the high stakes surrounding the drug nearly a year after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and curtailed access to abortion across the country. President Joe Biden said his administration would fight the Texas ruling.

In Iowa, money for the victim compensation fund comes from fines and penalties paid by convicted criminals. For sexual assault victims, state law requires that the fund pay “the cost of a medical examination of a victim for the purpose of gathering evidence and the cost of treatment of a victim for the purpose of preventing venereal disease,” but makes no mention of contraception or pregnancy risk.

Sandi Tibbetts Murphy, who served as director of the victim assistance division under Miller, said the longtime policy for Iowa has been to include the cost of emergency contraception in the expenses covered by the fund. She said that in rare cases, the fund paid for abortions for rape victims.

“My concern is for the victims of sexual assault, who, with no real notice, are now finding themselves either unable to access needed treatment and services, or are now being forced to pay out of their own pocket for those services, when this was done at no fault of their own,” she said.

LEBANON, Ohio —

The trial continued Tuesday for a former youth sports coach on trial for sex crimes involving children.

Eric Schmidt is charged with one count of rape, two counts of gross sexual imposition and two counts of public indecency.

Tuesday's testimony centered around text messages one of the accusers sent to friends the night she claims she was molested.

That accuser is 19 years old, but she was 12 in 2015 — the year prosecutors say crimes against her were committed.

The teenager said she was friends with Schmidt's daughter and was at their house for a sleepover in April 2015.

During her testimony, she read text messages she sent to friends that night from Schmidt's home in Mason.

"I said, 'I really don't understand why you find that funny. No, seriously, it's a remarried man trying to rape a freaking 12-year-old kid," the accuser said.

She said Schmidt exposed himself and touched her inappropriately in the theatre room of the house after his daughter fell asleep.

Assistant prosecutor Travis Vieux asked her, "Did the defendant touch your hand?"

"Yes," she said.

Vieux asked, "Did he touch your arm?"

"Yes," she said.

Vieux asked, "Did he rub up your arm?"

"Yes," she said.

Vieux asked, "Did he touch your shoulder?"

"Yes," she said.

Vieux asked, "Did he touch your breast?"

"Yes," she said.

While prosecutors are trying to use the accuser's texts as proof that Schmidt is guilty of gross sexual imposition and public indecency, defense attorneys tried using the messages to their advantage.

During cross-examination, defense attorney Bill Gallagher asked, "Eric is trying to touch you?"

"Yes," she said.

Gallagher asked, "You don't yell, right?"

"No," she said.

Gallagher asked, "You said you just sort of froze?"

"Yes," she said."

Gallagher questioned how could she be frozen at the same time she carried on text message conversations with multiple friends.

"Does it shock you at all, in all of your text messaging in here, there's not a single spelling mistake, but you're stressed out and trying to figure out what to do?" Gallagher said.

"It's called autocorrect," the accuser said.

Mason Detective Jeff Wyss also took the stand Tuesday. He said he began to investigate the 2015 allegations, but the case was closed when the accuser's family decided not to pursue charges.

That case was reopened in 2019 after a second accuser, also 12 at the time, made allegations against Schmidt.

He's been charged with rape in that case.

Prosecutors said that accuser was sexually assaulted at a party for football families in the Kings and Mason area.

Schmidt had coached youth football, baseball and softball.

That girl is 14 years old now and is expected to testify Wednesday.

Before calling her to the stand, prosecutors called a relative of Schmidt's to testify about what she said she witnessed in January 2015 when she was temporarily staying with the family.

She was 19 years old at the time.

She said she was alone with Schmidt watching Vampire Diaries when he suggested they watch the show downstairs.

She said they relocated to the theater room and continued watching Netflix.

Vieux asked her to describe what Schmidt did that she thought to be sexually inappropriate.

"When we were watching Netflix, after some time, the notice on the Netflix screen says 'Do you wish to continue? Click yes or no.' That had popped up. I looked to my right to see if the remote was near me to click yes. It wasn't there. I had turned to my left and Mr. Schmidt was sitting there with his genitals out," the relative said.

Schmidt has not been charged with any crime in connection to that incident.

Schmidt maintains his innocence. Gallagher previously said Schmidt passed a polygraph test.

OXFORD, Ohio — A 21-year-old construction contractor from northern Ohio is in jail, accused of sexually assaulting a Miami University student early Saturday after giving her a ride home from a bar.

Zachary Michael Frankart of Clyde in Sandusky County, was arrested and booked into the Butler County Jail on suspicion of rape and for theft, for allegedly taking items belonging to the woman, the release stated.

Oxford police responded around 1:20 a.m. to North College Avenue. A passerby called 911 who reported he found a crying woman lying in a front who said she had been raped.

The Miami student said she did not know the assailant but that she accepted a ride from him from an uptown bar, according to a release posted to the Oxford Division of Police Facebook page.

Police officers and detectives identified a suspect within hours of the sexual assault report and found him at a local hotel.

A new piece of legislature in Ohio wants to make it illegal for a married person to rape their partner.

Ohio is one of a few states where spousal rape is still legal, and House Bill 121 wants to change that. The bill would "eliminate the spousal exceptions" for crimes like rape, sexual battery and gross sexual imposition.

"It is just offensive to me as a woman, as someone who is married, that under Ohio law my husband, my spouse under certain circumstances, it is not criminal for him to engage in the act of raping me,” Rep. Kristin Boggs, who sponsored the bill, said.

Boggs said people who oppose the bill think if the exemption is removed, false accusations would pour in, especially in divorce cases. She doesn't believe that will happen, though, and she said the benefits outweigh the risks.

"It is really nearly impossible to prove these allegations unless there is concrete evidence that is indisputable that a marital spouse engaged in raping their partner,” Boggs said.

This bill was first introduced to the House in 2017 and has been brought up to the legislature three times. The bill is in the House Criminal Justice Committee, and opposing testimony had not been heard as of Friday.

A former Loveland police officer faces more than a dozen counts of sexual assault, prosecutors announced Monday afternoon.

In a news release, Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters announced a grand jury had indicted Anthony Pecord, 48, on eight counts of rape and eight counts of sexual battery.

In Hamilton County court filings, prosecutors said Pecord assaulted an individual on Jan. 24, while he was still a sworn officer with the Loveland Police Department, after “administering an intoxicant to (the victim) surreptitiously.”

Monday's release indicated prosecutors "are concerned that more victims may be out there."

Hamilton County Sheriff's Office (Provided)

WCPO examined Pecord's personnel file after the initial charges were filed and found that the city of Loveland began investigating him the day following the alleged assault. In a Jan. 25 memo to Pecord, police Chief Dennis Rahe put him on paid administrative leave and instructed him to remain available for questioning.

Pecord resigned a month later and turned himself in to authorities less than a week after that, on March 5. A judge held Pecord in the Hamilton County Justice Center on a $1 million bond, where he remained Monday.

Prosecutors asked anyone with information about other potential victims to contact Hamilton County Sheriff's Detective Jack Losekamp at 513-595-7484.

WCPO is showing Pecord's mugshot due to prosecutors' belief that there could be more victims. Read why WCPO is cutting down on its use of mugshots here.

Prior reporting by WCPO 9 News real-time editor Sarah Walsh contributed to this report.

BURLINGTON, Ky. — A Boone County jury found Jacob Walter not guilty of one count of sodomy in the first degree, but were deadlocked and unable to come to a verdict on a second charge of sodomy in the first degree or the charge of rape.

Walter was arrested in 2018 after he pinned a woman down and raped her until she bled, according to the Boone County Sheriff's Department.

According to court documents, the 7-foot-tall, 300-pound Walter held the victim down, choked her and ignored her pleas to stop, leaving her bruised and bleeding by the time her mother called police.

"Walter dismissed the victim by laughing at her and telling her that she would be fine," Sgt. Philip Ridgell wrote in a release.

Walter registered as a juvenile sex offender after an incident authorities said he committed just weeks before his 18th birthday.

The victim in that case told investigators that Walter ignored her telling him to stop sexual intercourse. She later recorded a phone call in which he admitted to doing it despite her requests to stop, according to court records. A judge ordered Walter to remain in community placement with the Department of Juvenile Justice for a maximum of three years after that case.

BOONE COUNTY, Ky. —

A jury has reached a verdict in the rape trial of a former Covington Catholic basketball star.

On Friday evening, the judge read the decision for the charges against Jacob Walter, who was accused of assaulting a woman he met on a dating app in 2018.

The jury found Walter not guilty of sodomy. The judge declared a mistrial on the other two charges of rape and sodomy after the jury deadlocked.

Testimony began in the trial earlier in the week.

Tuesday was technical and anatomical. Officials listed evidence and what markings were found on the alleged victim's body.

Walter towers in the courtroom. The 7-foot-tall former athlete was charged with one count of rape and two counts of sodomy. He was surrounded by his attorneys as his trial began.

Boone County Detective Brian Cochran gathered physical and DNA evidence in the case.

"The remaining profile matches Jacob Walter. The estimated frequency of this profile is one person in 4.3 decillion random unrelated individuals," Cochran said.

Two detectives and a nurse answered rounds of questions from the prosecution and defense.

The defense built an argument the sex was consensual, citing the victim's family was home during the alleged assaults. It was after spending the full day with Walter that the victim reported the allegations.

The nurse who examined the victim said the neurobiology of trauma can affect a victim's recall.

"This might have happened to you but you might not remember every single moment as you're telling it to somebody," said Amanda Peel, a forensic nurse with St. Elizabeth.

The nurse detailed the exam starting at the victim's head and moving down her body, noting bruises to her breasts and lacerations to her buttocks.

"Pain, tenderness or injuries and it looks like I saw that on the mid-back. I saw it on the breasts, right arm, on the lower bilateral legs and on the thigh as well," Peel said.

The defense argued those could be due to diagnosed medical conditions of the victim.