You heard about the conviction; now read the details on that child molest

ALLEN COUNTY, Ind. ---It’s hard to know where to begin with this child molest story.

Do you focus on the refusal of Stephen J. Bush to appear in Allen Superior Court last week where he was tried in absentia for sex crimes committed on his step daughter, crimes so sickening it’s hard to read them?

Or, do you start with the mother’s discovery of her sex toys in her daughter’s bedroom? 

[Note: she accepted her husband’s denial that he left them in the bedroom and she said she didn’t know “how the Victim knew of the sex toys,” even though she’d “found her sex toys in the Victim’s bedroom three to four times.”]

Stephen J. Bush

Or, that the mother also knew Bush tracked the girl’s health and menstrual cycle when she started her periods. 

What a weirdo.

The Fort Wayne police started investigating child molesting accusations in December 2022 when the girlfriend of the biological father brought the victim to the police desk. At that point, she was 14. The victim said the abuse started when she was six.

Officer Alissa Barnhorst took the report and turned it over to the Department of Child Services (DCS)  and Fort Wayne police detectives.

According to the probable cause affidavit submitted by Det. Kenneth Johnson, the victim was born in 2008 but by January 2009, the biological parents had split and the victim’s mother was seeing Bush, now 41. 

During the investigation, detectives found out that Bush apparently molested his former spouse’s underage sister, only that  was never reported to police.

That information is tucked at the end of the lengthy probable cause, rich in detail. The spouse’s sister, as she is known in the document, was 16 when she and her older sister left Oregon and went to live with their grandmother in Fort Wayne.

When Bush would stay late at night, the sister said she would wake up to Bush standing over her and there were times when he touched her, her breasts, her private parts and even pulled down her clothing and put his mouth on her privates.

“She was overwhelmed, scared and didn’t know what to do,” court documents reported. “She began having problems going to sleep. She would block her bedroom door at night.”

When she told her big sister and grandmother about the abuse, “they accused her of trying to seduce (Bush.) She was blamed for the defendant’s behavior.” No one contacted authorities, court documents said.

That lack of reporting and accountability led to the horrific molestation this second victim endured for eight years before her dad’s girlfriend took her down to police headquarters.

How she lived through this without becoming a runaway or acting out in school to the extent that it attracted the attention of guidance counselors and teachers or attempting suicide is hard to imagine.

Bush was constantly in this girl’s room, touching her, penetrating her, forcing her to have sex both vaginally and anally.

The abuse was non stop with Snapchat photos sent to her cell phone of vaginas, penises, breasts and buttocks. When she told him to stop sending the messages, he told her he “wanted her and he loved her.”

The last time he molested her was just before she was taken to police headquarters. He ejaculated on her bedsheets, something he did numerous times, the victim said.

During the house search soon after the victim made her report, the mother told police she didn’t believe her husband’s semen would be on those sheets. A tested DNA sample proved it was his.

The victim’s mother showed detectives a blue and white bag that contained all the couple’s sex toys and what they were used for. They were collected as evidence, most probably with blue nitrile gloves. 

The girl’s mother said when she found the white/purple sex toy in her daughter’s room, she asked Bush how it got there. Bush told her that “he had not done this,” court documents said, and apparently that was truth enough for her.

Last week during trial, the victim, who survived all of this as a juvenile diabetic with a monitor on her arm, took the stand. Deputy prosecutors Tracy Noetzel and Emily Snyder will tell you just how difficult it is for these victims to testify in front of 12 strangers about either the worst day or worst days of their lives.

It’s shocking that even though Bush refused to appear at his own trial, his wife, the victim’s mother, did testify for him twice. She stood by him, even with all the evidence.

The jury took two hours - barely enough time to have lunch - before they convicted him of four counts of Level 1 felony child molesting, a Level 4 felony for sexual misconduct with a minor and a Level 5 felony for sexual misconduct with a minor.

With a Level 1 felony carrying  a sentence of between 20 and 40 years, Bush is facing a hefty sentence and there’s little his attorneys, Lierin Rossman and David Felts, can do.

What could be the mitigators in a case like this?

Meanwhile on Facebook, one woman put out a call to arms, a plea for those who might know Bush’s whereabouts during the trial and report him to the authorities.

Even as his wife, the mother of the victim, was on the stand testifying for him, he was hiding with a warrant out for his behind.

“If anyone sees @Stephen Bee in Fort Wayne, call police. He has a warrant for not showing up for court for child molestation of his step daughter and his wife chose him over her child! How f—-d up is that?”

The poster goes on to say that photos posted by the couple on social media portray a happy family “going through foreclosure because of him.”

His AI-generated profile picture shows a handsome “military Dad,” barely resembling his actual photo next to it.

On Sept. 9, Bush, now locked up at the Allen County Jail, is scheduled to be sentenced in front of Allen Superior Court Judge Fran Gull.

In court, he could be wearing orange and white stripes indicating he needs to be “separated” from other inmates.

In jail or prison, inmates don’t take kindly to convicted child molesters. The Indiana, the prison typically associated with “chomos” is the New Castle Correctional Facility.

If that’s the case, he will be spared the random violence of Westville or Miami where it’s not unusual to hear of a prison death. Conditions are deplorable.

Saturday, one mother of a Westville inmate reported this to The Probable Cause: “So Westville hasn’t given inmates water for more than 15 hours and they didn’t even care when I called. What can I do?”

And this: “In segregation, they cut the water off and didn’t feed them cause they say they are understaffed and need to end their shift after dinner and they were forgotten.”