A 21-year-old man faces charges of statutory sexual assault after police say he sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl earlier this year.<\/p>\n
Carbondale police received a ChildLine report after the 14-year-old was taken to a Luzerne County hospital on July 27, where she expressed concerns about pregnancy following intercourse with a 20-year-old a few days earlier.<\/p>\n
The victim initially told authorities she did not know the perpetrator, although the incident occurred at his home.<\/p>\n
During the investigation, however, the victim identified the suspect as Jamal St. Clair, of Carbondale. The case was transferred first to the Lackawanna County district attorney\u2019s office and then to the Carbondale Police Department.<\/p>\n
On Aug. 14, officers met with the victim and her mother. The victim told officers she was visiting friends in Carbondale and planned to spend the night at a friend\u2019s house late on July 21.\u00a0While they were hanging out at Russell Park, St. Clair arrived.<\/p>\n
The victim soon learned she could no longer stay at her friend\u2019s house.\u00a0She called her parents, but they were unable to pick her up, so she decided to spend the night at St. Clair\u2019s home.<\/p>\n
The victim told officers the two smoked marijuana before she fell asleep. She reported waking up to St. Clair sexually assaulting her.<\/p>\n
Officers noted the age difference between the two was more than six years.<\/p>\n
On Aug. 17, the victim was interviewed at the Northeastern Children\u2019s Advocacy Center and provided the same account of events.<\/p>\n
On Sept. 4, officers obtained recorded phone calls between St. Clair and his mother.\u00a0During one call, St. Clair said he believed the minor was 17 or 18. In another call, he said, \u201cShe didn\u2019t go to sleep. She asked for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
St. Clair faces felony charges of statutory sexual assault and corruption of minors.<\/p>\n
He remains held at the Lackawanna County Prison in lieu of $150,000 bail.\u00a0A preliminary hearing is scheduled for 10:15 a.m. on Oct. 6 before District Judge Paul Keeler.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 21-year-old man faces charges of statutory sexual assault after police say he sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[3099,202,201,182,139,28,178,180,179,181],"class_list":["post-294065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-carbondale","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-top-stories-stt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}