An 81-year-old Lexington Park area man identified in court records as a convicted sex offender was arrested this week on charging papers alleging he drove a 14-year-old girl to his home and grabbed her thigh.
Clifton Bobbitt Somerville Sr. was charged Tuesday with second-degree assault from the Sept. 11 incident, and with failing to comply with a requirement that he notify the St. Mary’s Sheriff’s Office of a change of his address. A court commissioner released Somerville from custody Tuesday on personal recognizance, on the condition that he have no unsupervised contact with any children.
Somerville had seen the girl several times at a soup kitchen near Point Lookout Road before he offered her a ride last week from there to her home at a nearby trailer park, according to charging papers filed by detective William Raddatz of the St. Mary’s Bureau of Criminal Investigations.
‘‘When the defendant got close to [the trailer park], he turned around and stated he had to bring some items in his van to a friend,” Raddatz wrote in a statement of probable cause. ‘‘The victim became afraid, but stated the defendant drove too fast for her to get out of the vehicle.”
Somerville drove the girl to his current home off Route 5 south of Great Mills, according to court papers.
‘‘She was afraid and did not know what to do, so she complied with his instruction to come inside,” the detective wrote, and Somerville allegedly grabbed her without her consent. ‘‘The defendant told her she did not have to do anything she didn’t want to do,” court papers state, ‘‘and she asked him to take her home. The defendant complied.”
Somerville said Thursday that he will contest the charges in court. ‘‘That’s not true,” he said of the allegations. ‘‘I’ve got a lawyer already.”
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