After nearly four hours of jury deliberations, a Cheyenne man was convicted Tuesday of felony elder adult abuse for sexually touching himself in front of a 65-year-old woman last year.

On the evening of Jan. 4, 2008, Ricky Lee Dougherty, 45, entered a woman’s room in the Cheyenne Regional Medical Center Acute Rehabilitation Unit, exposed himself and masturbated. (The victim’s name is being withheld by the Telegram due to the nature of the crime against her.)

The wheelchair-bound woman was diagnosed with Charcot-Marie-Tooth, a degenerative nerve disease, when she was 28 years old and was completing rehab at the center after a third surgery on her left leg.

“I was scared to death. I was terrified,” she said of the incident during testimony Tuesday. “I wanted out of there. I couldn’t imagine that the safest place I was supposed to be was in a hospital and there was a man in there doing that.”

As she spoke, the victim used a tissue to wipe away tears.

For the complete article see the 08-21-2009 issue.

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