(This is a combination of stories by Tommy Gardner that were published in the News & Citizen on Oct. 19 and Nov. 2, 2017.)
A Johnson man already facing a slew of charges involving sex with a minor was back in court last week to face more than a dozen additional charges involving two more victims.
Police allege he also offered to pay off the original victim.
Last week, police alleged that Jay H. Orost, 56, sexually abused at least two other victims.
Orost pleaded not guilty Oct. 16 in Lamoille County Superior Court to seven felony charges related to the alleged abuse of a juvenile relative over the course of seven years. He had turned himself in to police just hours earlier.
Despite that voluntary surrender, Judge Thomas Carlson ordered Orost held without bail, saying the evidence against him, despite coming almost solely from the alleged victim, who’s now 17, was “overwhelming.”
Orost was charged with two counts of sexual assault with a child in his trust and one count of repeated aggravated sexual assault.
Each of those charges carries a prison sentence of three years to life.
He was also charged with three counts of lewd and lascivious conduct and first-degree aggravated domestic assault.
On Oct. 16, Orost was ordered held without bail after pleading not guilty to his original charges. On Oct. 27, he pleaded not guilty to a dozen more charges: two counts of sexual assault with a minor, five counts of lewd and lascivious conduct with a minor, and one count of obstruction of justice. The last charge stems from the alleged attempts to pay off the victim. Orost also pleaded not guilty to six counts of violating abuse prevention orders.
Orost faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted.
According to a police affidavit, the years-long abuse finally came to light in late September, when the alleged victim told her high school guidance counselor she had been sexually, physically and emotionally abused since age 10. The counselor contacted the Vermont Department for Children and Families.
Police records lay out, in explicit detail, how Orost allegedly abused the girl from the age of 10 — making her watch pornography, coercing her to perform sex acts on him, and choking her and slamming her up against a wall. The incidents number in the dozens, she told police.
When police asked the girl why she waited so long to seek help, she told them she was “counting down the days to when she turned 18,” but then noticed Orost had begun looking lewdly at another, younger relative, and sometimes would get drunk and “accidentally” stumble and grope one of her female friends.
At the Oct. 16 arraignment, Orost’s defense lawyer, Hal Stevens, tried to persuade the judge to let Orost out on $50,000 bail, $5,000 of which could be posted upfront. He said his client is an upstanding part of the Johnson community, with a high-paying job at Global Foundries that would be jeopardized if he were held without bail, limiting his ability to provide for his family.
Lamoille County State’s Attorney Paul Finnerty argued that the nature of the crimes being alleged against Orost “go to the heart of his relationship” with his relatives. He’s been living in a hotel in Shelburne ever since a family member filed a relief-from-abuse order against him, and he works remotely. Finnerty said Orost is a flight risk.
“A lot of things that might keep him in the community aren’t going to be there because of these charges,” Finnerty said.
Even the judge noted where the dozen or so people who attended the arraignment were seated — behind the prosecution, not the defense.
“I see a sizable crowd on one side of the courtroom, and it’s not his,” Carlson said.
One of the new victims is a juvenile friend of the first victim. Investigators say that alleged victim told them Orost would get her drunk and try to kiss and fondle her and get into bed with her.
In a series of text messages, Orost appears to reference a long-running sexual relationship with the teen, texting at one point that breaking things off with her is “gonna be hard for me because we have been very sexual for years now.” In another text message, he says, “We have fooled around like this for years, not sure why you are getting defencive (sic) these days.”
Another says: “Now it is like you are scared of me. That bugs me after all these years of joking around with you.”
The other alleged victim is another relative, whom police allege Orost sexually assaulted and exposed himself to in the 1980s and 1990s, when she was a young girl. That victim, now in her 30s, told police that Orost made her perform oral sex on him when she was 6 years old and he was in his late 20s. She also said that he sexually assaulted her on numerous occasions when she was in fourth grade, and at least once when she was in ninth grade. She also alleged that Orost sexually assaulted yet another relative who has yet to press charges.
As far as the original victim who came forward two weeks ago, she says Orost offered to pay her $100,000 “for her pain and suffering.” He said he would also have himself castrated and move to North Carolina, as long as she agreed to drop the charges.
That victim told police she was pressured by Orost’s family not to press charges, because the family needed Orost’s income. A note that a family member says Orost wrote includes the line “No one has to die or go broke.”
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