djohnson@mojonews.com
LISBON A Common Pleas Court jury was selected on Tuesday for Austin Powell, a wheelchair-bound East Liverpool area man charged with rape and two counts of gross sexual imposition involving two small children.
During opening arguments, Assistant County Prosecutor Tammie Riley Jones said Powell, now 29, of East Liverpool Road, is accused of sexually assaulting the girls when they were between the ages of 6 and 9 years old. There are four years in difference between the girls, so the assaults allegedly occurred over several years beginning in 2009 and continuing through 2013.
At the time, the girls said nothing about what was happening and Jones said they did not know about what happened to the other. But the younger one eventually told a friend around July of 2018, leading to him helping her to tell family.