PRESS RELEASE
PRESS RELEASE
KAUFMAN, Tex. — District Attorney Erleigh Norville Wiley announced today that a Kaufman County jury found BRYANT PEARL guilty of the offense of Continuous Sexual Abuse of a Young Child, a first-degree felony. Due to a previous conviction for Sexual Assault of a Child in Dallas County, Pearl was given an automatic life sentence without the possibility of parole by the Honorable Shelton Gibbs in the 422nd District Court.
At trial, jurors heard from the named victim, as well as two other identified victims he perpetrated acts of abuse on. Pearl began sexually abusing each of these young girls from the time they were in middle school, with some of the abuse lasting until the girl(s) turned 17. Pearl would isolate his victims from their family and convince them that no one would believe them if they told of the abuse, or that they were a willing participant. Pearl’s current criminal charges were enhanced for a prior conviction for Sexual Assault of a Child in 2006 out of Dallas County, Texas.
For this crime, Pearl had already served 3 years in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Despite this previous conviction, and the lifetime sex offender registration it carried, Pearl repeatedly dated women who had young daughters that he would prey upon. Evidence showed that while Pearl claimed to reside in Dallas, Texas per his sex offender registration, he was actually living in a home in the Travis Ranch Subdivision perpetrating this abuse.
The prosecution was led by Assistant Criminal District Attorneys Ashley Holman and Taylor McConnell, Investigator Sandra Ortiz, Victim’s Assistance Coordinator Sabrina Mumaw, and paralegal Amanda Morris. The District Attorney’s Office would like to thank the Kaufman County Sheriff’s Office for all of their hard work and the case’s lead investigator Janet Freeman.
“This case is a textbook example of the power of grooming behavior in child sex abuse situations. It is not only the victims of abuse who are subject to a predator’s acts of grooming, but everyone in the child’s life who may be in a position to protect them,” explained District Attorney Erleigh Wiley.