Law&Crime Sidebar - Dad Raped Daughter, Fathered Children for More Than a Decade: Prosecutors

Episode Date: June 17, 2025

Kenneth Cook, 44, of Raleigh County, West Virginia is facing more than 150 charges that include sexual assault and incest. Investigators say Cook fathered three children with his biological daughter. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber discusses the disturbing details of the case with former sex crimes and child abuse prosecutor Marian Braccia.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: Want an inventory software that comes fully packed? Check out Odoo for a free 15-day trial at: https://odoo.com/sidebarinventoryHOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger, Christina O'Shea & Jay CruzScript Writing & Producing - Savannah Williamson & Juliana BattagliaGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. A horrific story out of West Virginia. A man is facing more than 150 charges after police say he sexually assaulted his own daughter for more than a decade, fathering multiple children with her. She's now opened up about her struggle on social media. She is casting blame on who she says is responsible, as he now. faces lifetimes behind bars. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber.

A father, which if these allegations are true, maybe we use loosely, a father is being held in jail pending trial in Raleigh County, West Virginia for allegedly sexually assaulting his own daughter for 12 years, starting when she was only nine years old. Yeah. And by the way, in a horrific, disgusting, disturbing twist. The two now have three children together. To talk about this, let me bring back on to sidebar, Marion Bracha, practice professor of law, former child abuse, sex crimes prosecutor. So Marion, this is pretty disgusting.

This is beyond disturbing. Are incest cases more common than we might realize, unfortunately? Well, the cases might not be very common because unfortunately when there is abuse within a family. Oftentimes, it will go unreported, undocumented, unprosecuted. So the cases themselves probably aren't as frequent as the actual occurrence of the crime is. But it certainly happens, as we can see in this case. By the way, so these are allegations, right? He's innocent until proven guilty. I have to say that. I have to remind myself of that, given what he's charged with, and we will talk about the charges, what the allegations are. How on earth, in a trial, an insolven

trial, right? When, if this happens, when it happens, if they happen in general, how do you get a fair and impartial jury? I think that most defense attorneys would ask the same question. And this is probably a case where, because there are offspring involved, because this alleged sexual relationship resulted in the birth of three children, three offspring, this is actually a case that can be proved on the science. It can be proved based on blood tests, DNA results, birth records, other vital records. And so this is probably a case where the defense would seek to minimize or seek to challenge the science or the results of DNA testing or the validity of the records that are introduced. But you're right, this isn't a case where there is an affirmative defense saying,

sure I did it, but here's why, and this is why I shouldn't be convicted, there would really have to be a challenge to the proof elements that the prosecution would present. So this is the suspect. This is the suspect in this case, 44-year-old Kenneth Cook. He is reportedly facing 152 charges right now. We had a felony complaint that was first filed against him in December of 2024. People magazine reports that one of the children was found suffering from neglect in August, which seems to have maybe been the jumping off point for an investigation, he was charged with sexual abuse, sexual assault, child neglect, and three counts of incest, and then a warrant was issued for his arrest. He wasn't taken into custody until

March, and since then, he has been indicted. Now faces 149 total counts of incest, plus sexual assault, sexual abuse, child neglect, so 152 charges in total. Marion, this is, is this typical I've covered cases like this before where you have an alleged victim or victims describe repeated acts, repeated instances of sexual abuse, and yet they're not charged. The defendant's not charged for every one of those individual acts. This feels different. Is it typical to charge someone like this? Well, I can't speak to what is typical because that really does vary jurisdiction to

jurisdiction and state by state. In this particular jurisdiction in West Virginia, whoever the charging of authority was, whether it's the state attorney or the district attorney or the local police department, it would be up to them. It would be within their purview to determine how many charges to attach. So with a defendant who's charged with this many counts of incest, I think what we can glean from that is that the charging authority is saying in these 149 instances, this defendant allegedly engaged in sexual conduct, sexual contact with an offspring, with a child of his own, who was his daughter.

And so that number, that figure may have come about pursuant to their investigation, pursuant to their interviews with the complaining witness, with the daughter in this case. So it really is up to the charging authority whether they attach one charge per instance over a course of conduct over a number of years or whether they, attached just one charge to reflect an ongoing course of conduct. Hey, so look, I know you guys might be interested in true crime and legal stories, but a little side note here. Is anybody also in a business of some kind? If so, let me tell you real quick about ODU, our sponsor. Odu is a powerful all-in-one business software that helps you manage everything from sales to accounting. And yes,

inventory. Their inventory dashboard makes it easy to track receipts, delivery orders, POS orders, and see what's waiting late or back-ordered all at a glance. You pay for receipts, You automate vendor reminders, and you schedule deliveries all in just a few clicks. Plus, you get full warehouse management, the ability to set picking strategies, and real-time stock visibility. The best part, Odu's inventory app, syncs seamlessly with your sales and e-commerce apps so everything stays connected. Do you want an inventory software that comes fully packed? We'll check out Odu for a free 15-day trial at Odu.com slash sidebar inventory. Is there a strength in numbers, the prosecution throwing out more of these charges, more of

of these alleged incidents, or it could be you wonder if there's so many charges and if there's a weakness with respect to a few, does that jeopardize the whole case? I imagine the way that they try to prove 149 episodes is to have the victim in this case testify about each one of them, which just to me sounds like such a daunting, grueling task for her to describe this in detail on the stand. Is there a strengthened numbers or could it hurt the prosecution when you have so many charges? No, I think you've perfectly crystallized, but the strength and weaknesses of charging like this, charging, you know, attaching one particular count to each instance of the offense. I think that the, perhaps the thought process of attaching one charge per instance is to be able to aggregate the sentence.

So if the statutory maximum penalty or sentence on one charge of incest is, say, 20 years, if the defendant is convicted of more. than one count of incest, he can be sentenced to consecutive periods of imprisonment. So it could be 20 plus 20 plus 20 plus however many charges he's found guilty of. So I think that that is the thought process in terms of charging that many counts. But realistically, when it comes to trial, would you have a complainant on the stand testifying to 149 different instances? not. I haven't seen that, but I think there is something being communicated there by the prosecution and by the charging authority that there is enough evidence to proceed to trial

if they wanted to and if they wanted to present testimony and evidence on those 149 different counts they could. And by the way, if someone's convicted of that, every charge, would a judge run every sentence concurrently or consecutively? Because it's consecutively you're looking at what the rest of your life in prison? And again, that would be up to the sentencing judge. That would be something that the prosecution could ask for, could ask for statutory maximum consecutive sentences. So 20 plus 20 plus 20 that I described before, or they could run concurrently, which means that all the sentences on the individual charges if the defendant is convicted would run at the same time. Now, we got our hands on this indictment.

It's 18 pages long, and it lists out every single one of those 152 charges. For example, count one is third degree sexual assault of the victim identified in the indictment as A.T., and this is in connection with an alleged incident when she was 14 years old. Count two, sexual abuse by parent, guardian, custodian, or person in a position of trust, also connected to when she was 14 years old. By the way, the fact that they have to have a charge like this is just disgusting in and of itself, but obviously things like this happen. Then you got counts three through 151. Those are the incest charges. And then count 152 is gross child neglect creating substantial risk of serious bodily injury or death.

That last count is apparently in connection with one of Cook's youngest children, a one-year-old, identified only as KC, although investigators indicated that all three children, now ages 5, 3, and 1, according to Outlet Channel 2 now, they were found to be suffering from neglect. Marion, how do you prove neglect of someone so young? Well, again, I think that that is something that's provable via the records, via hospital records, medical records, any observations of investigators or social workers or caregivers of the child at the time that the child was discovered or cared for. So that is certainly something that would have to be proven by eyewitness testimony

and by the condition of the child as memorialized and as documented. documented in the records for their treatment. What's a possible defense for Cook? The only two possible defenses that I can foresee would be that there is no consanguineous relationship between him and the complainant, meaning that his defense might be that the complaining witness, AT,

is not a biological relative of his, is not a blood relative of his. Maybe he could claim that she's a stepchild or an otherwise family relation, but they are not descended from the same ancestor. That's really the definition of incest. Now, of course, a very simple blood test and paternity test might undermine that defense.

If that were something that you wanted to put forward, that would be one defense. The other defense is something we alluded to earlier, which would be that any of the science, any of the paternity tests or blood tests that the prosecution would seek to introduce would be tainted or would be unreliable. reliable expert testimony and that would come down to a judge's determination as to whether

the jury would be permitted to hear from those experts and hear the results of that testing. To be perfectly honest, those are really the only two defenses I can think of unless, of course, there are inconclusive results from the paternity test between the complainants' offspring, AT's three children and this defendant. If there is no connection there, then the defense is basically unfortunately he said she said the complainant is saying this abuse happened the defendant is saying it didn't and there is no forensic evidence there's no scientific evidence to prove that this sexual contact actually existed of course if these three children are his children if they are his descended offspring and of course that defense also goes out the window

just to be clear about something and I know this is disgusting but I have to ask it nonetheless, to be clear, even if she was 18 years old, consent is not a defense to incest, right? Correct. It's not a consent. It is not a defense to incest. We have public policy and public health reasons behind making criminalizing incest.

And going back historically, the public health concern for incest was the prevalence of genetic disorders. If people who are descended again from the same ancestor and come from the same bloodline are reproducing, there is a higher likelihood of recessive genes coming to the fore, and that could lead to lines of genetic disorders. And so there is a public health concern

for it first and foremost, even if the sexual contact were between two consenting adults who are from the same bloodline. But of course, where we see incest most, at least from a prosecutor's perspective, is when there is an adult perpetrator against a child victim. Yeah.

Now, Cook's daughter, who's now in her 20s, has actually publicly identified herself as Alexandria Thomas on social media. And as we went through the indictment, we realized something. Each of those incest charges is connected to a one-month period of her life, starting when she was only nine years old. So there are 12 charges for every year between the ages of 9 and 20, and then six months worth when the victim was 21. The most recent abuse charge is from July of 2024. Now, again, we talked about the idea of there is no defense to that, the incest, you know, the consent. But here's the important part. Alexandra posted about her experience on her Facebook page, and this is what she wrote.

Quote, since court has now ended, I'm going to speak my part on the monster most of you all keep messaging me about. I've reported him multiple times since I was nine years old, but my grandmother worked hand in hand with C.P. Nobody believed me. She made them all think I was lying about it. When my grandpa found out what was happening, he didn't even look surprised. The last time I told a guidance counselor what was happening and CPS was called, my grandma had it swept under the rug and my dad told me if I ever told again, he knew ways to get me erased. Okay. Now, Marion, we don't know if this is all true. If this is true, it's highly disturbing. First of all, generally. Generally speaking, if these allegations are true, is that something you've heard before?

I think I just covered a case recently where there was an allegation where a parent came forward and said, you know, don't bring to light this, I think it was a stepmother accused of having sexual relations with her stepson and the stepson was allegedly told by family members, don't say anything, don't report her. Is this something that happens? Constantly, Jesse, constantly. Absolutely. These are, this is a terrible situation that I have heard far too many times in my career where abuse of a child, in particular sexual abuse of a child, is swept under the rug and is something that the family wants to deal with internally or the family doesn't want publicized. And there's certainly a concern for, you know, public shame and and other, other cultural considerations.

But this is unfortunately not something that is new to hear. If these allegations are true, and these are just allegations, what liability could grandparents face here? Could the grandparents face here? So there is a charge that you mentioned in Pennsylvania, where I live in practice, we refer to it as Ewak, endangering the welfare of a child, and that I believe is the second charge that attaches to Cook's indictment under the West Virginia terminology and the West Virginia statutory code. So if these grandparents had any kind of supervisory relationship with the child, if they had any kind of caregiving responsibilities over her when she was a child,

they could potentially face criminal charges for endangering her welfare by not, by allowing her to remain in this abusive setting, in this abusive environment and prolonging the abuse for almost the entirety of her childhood. What about the CPS? If they were alerted, didn't do more, what do you think? Did they face any kind of liability? Yeah. I looked into that too, Jesse. That would be something called a Monell claim.

And that's where a private citizen can sue the government for failure to protect their due process rights, their due process to life, essentially. And that might be hard to prove. It might be a negligence claim. It might be that they would bring a charge against one particular social worker or one particular caseworker for having dropped the proverbial ball, so to speak. But to bring a claim against the entire social services department might be a challenge because the plaintiff, if this were a civil case, would have to prove that there was a culture or a policy or practice in place of depriving people in AT's position of their due process rights. So it is certainly something that I'm sure a very skilled civil litigator would look at. I think it would be a challenge to bring a 1983 Monell claim, but it is something that's worth looking into. Based on these allegations in the Facebook post, and let's go back to Alexandra's Facebook post.

It says, quote, my youngest was born with health issues and stayed in the hospital for the first week of his life, but wasn't allowed to go to the doctors afterward because he was scared of the truth of what he had done leaking out. I was nursing a sick baby on my own who desperately needed medical attention. Again, Mary, really disturbing, disturbing allegations. What do you make of her posting this publicly for the world to know? Well, I mean, it would be a foreshadowing. It would be a preview I would anticipate of testimony that she would give or perhaps testimony that she's already given,

but for an indicting grand jury. This would be the sum and substance of her testimony to substantiate the neglect charge for the youngest child. I think it also might perhaps go to explain some of her, some of the compliance conduct over the past five years or so. She was still under the pressure. She was still under the mental, forcible compulsion of her father. And because of that, her hands were even tied insofar as caring for her youngest.

So if there were ever a question about her neglect of the child or her lack of care or provision of medical care or support for the child, I think this is serving as an explanation. for how the child's got to be in such poor condition. And just to be clear, the idea of this happening, allegedly for 12 years, three children are born out of this. She's so young. How on earth has this not, how on earth has this been allowed to go on? How on earth was he not arrested or was this really further investigated?

I think people are going to look at this story and say, I don't understand it. I don't get why we're talking about it now. not years ago. I completely agree with you. I completely agree with you. And I think that's why we need to pay a lot of attention when children tell us that there is something amiss in their lives when they are concerned or when they are uncomfortable about something.

It really does, you know, to overuse the phrase, but it really does take a village. And so if there are teachers, social workers, guidance counselors, caseworkers, grandparents, neighbors, other people in the children's lives who are seeing. that there is something amiss then it really is the responsibility of all of us to look out for the children in our communities and the children who might be exposed to this great risk now in terms of cook the defendant he's been locked up in raleigh county jail in a 500 000 bonds since march he's due back in court this month i also was thinking the fact that he's charged with so many crimes is that leverage for him to work out a deal they don't want to have to have

Alexander Thomas take the stand. They don't want to have to have a relive all of these alleged incidents, right? So if you charge him with 152 crimes, is there leverage to drop some, you know, work something out? I can understand why prosecutors would not want this to go to trial. Absolutely. And I think that they would have the complainant that they would have Alexander Thomas's best interests and her concerns front and foremost in their minds when considering whether to extend an offer for the defendant to plead not guilty and to pursue some non-trial disposition. So that is certainly leverage, I will say, however, whether there's 152 counts or, you

know, one or two counts attached to a criminal complaint, there is always room for our conversations we had about the defendant accepting responsibility or entering into some other non-trial trial disposition to to save the time and the resources and certainly the trauma of this case going to trial. Well, I'll tell you this is one of the more disgusting, nauseating cases I've covered in quite some time. We'll keep a careful eye on it. We'll see how it progresses. As I said, his case is going to continue through the court system. And, you know, if these allegations are true, you know, I don't even know if the answer is better late than never that he's finally getting arrested. But again, he's entitled to a defense. We shall see where it goes.

Professor Bracha, thank you so much. Great seeing you. Appreciate you taking the time. Thank you. Have a great day. All right, everybody. That's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar. Thank you so much for joining us.

And as always, please subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you should get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time. You can binge all episodes of this long crime series, ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.