A Manchester pastor who was beforehand convicted of sexually abusing a boy was sentenced Wednesday to a different 10 years in jail for what witnesses testified was bodily assaulting an toddler by slamming the infant in opposition to the ground and placing him in a sink of frigid water.
Robert Nichols was sentenced Wednesday by Judge Kevin C. Doyle at Superior Court in Hartford to twenty years in jail, executed after he serves 10 years, plus one other 5 years on probation, in line with courtroom officers.
A jury discovered Nichols responsible of first-degree assault and two counts of threat of harm to a toddler in June after a 10-month-old child residing in his dwelling suffered probably life-threatening head trauma, in line with courtroom data and the state Division of Criminal Justice.
CT pastor beforehand convicted of kid sexual abuse discovered responsible of bodily abusing toddler residing in his dwelling
At his trial, one witness testified that she noticed Nichols wrap the infant in a good swaddle and slam him onto the ground quite a few occasions, whereas one other mentioned they noticed Nichols put the infant in a sink filled with ice water, inflicting the infant to thrash and hit his head, in line with courtroom data.
Nichols was the pastor of the Word of Faith Ministry in East Hartford and lived with a lot of his followers in a house that the ministry owned in Manchester.
Witnesses testified that Nichols claimed he communicated straight with God and used that to regulate his followers, together with the infant’s mother and father. An arrest warrant for Nichols named him and the mother and father because the child’s primary caregivers.
In the warrant for his arrest, police mentioned Nichols demanded obedience from his followers, together with the infant boy, who “rebelled” in opposition to Nichols, and have become the main target of a brutal disciplinary regime in August 2013.
The primary witness to the alleged abuse of the kid instructed police that Nichols labeled the boy “rebellious” and wanted to stick with him till he might “get the rebellion out of him,” the arrest warrant affidavit mentioned.
Nichols additionally sprayed the infant’s face with the sink sprayer till the kid couldn’t breathe, the warrant affidavit says.
Police in Manchester have been alerted after a pediatrician examined the boy and evaluations by the Suspected Child Abuse and Neglect Division at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center confirmed the infant’s enlarged head was most certainly the results of abuse when he was 9 to 12 months previous, in line with a warrant for Nichols’ arrest.
In an unrelated case, one other jury discovered Nichols responsible of two counts of fourth-degree sexual assault and threat of harm to a minor on Sept. 27, 2022, and he was sentenced to twenty years in jail, suspended after eight years served, and 10 years of probation.
Nichols was discovered responsible of sexually and bodily assaulting an 11-year-old boy who got here ahead after Nichols was arrested and charged with assaulting the infant, police mentioned.
Nichols, who was working an after-school program related to the Michael D. Fox Elementary School in Hartford in 2010, abused the boy after providing to let the boy stick with him for the summer time to assist his mom self-discipline him, data present.
In that case, he was sentenced to twenty years in jail to be suspended after he serves eight years, adopted by a decade on probation.
The sentences will run consecutively, courtroom officers mentioned.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”