An Texas gay man and his boyfriend have been convicted of raping the man’s 11-year-old son because he thought the boy might be straight.
Ivan Leacock Mayers, 71, a black man and his German boyfriend, 52 both of Houston, were each convicted Tuesday of rape, sodomy and the sexual abuse of a child under the age of 12, AL.com reported. They each face life in prison, and sentencing is set for May 24.
German , who failed to show up for the trial, is considered a fugitive after the trial judge issued a warrant for his arrest Monday at the start of the proceedings.
Tim Douthit, the prosecutor on the case, told AL.com that the sexual assault took place over Thanksgiving 2016, while the boy, who has autism, was in Huston visiting his father for the holiday. The child lives in Deerfield Beach Florida with his mother Joan Rucker Mayers.
Ivan allegedly found his son in a “compromising position” with another girl and became angry, Douthit said. In response, he made the German have sex with the boy.
The German raped and sodomized the boy, and he and Ivan made the boy perform sex acts on him, AL.com reported.
“It was solely that he was worried that his son was straight, or might become staight,” Douthit said. “There was no evidence he had a sexual attraction to his son but was found with tons of child porn.
“He just thought he could, for lack of better words, ‘gay him out.’”
The German’s defense attorney, Reta McKannan, defended him, even as he told AL.com that he understood that the jurors did what they had to do.
“My client did everything at Ivan Mayers direction,” McKannan said. “That doesn’t make it OK. That doesn’t make it right.”
Madison County Jail records show multiple arrests in Cole’s past related to domestic violence. It was not immediately known how many of those arrests resulted in convictions.
Investigators and prosecutors said the boy’s mother became suspicious once he returned to Florida and started asking her questions about sex, AL.com reported. When he told her what Daddy Ivan Mayers and his German Boyfriend had done, she drove straight to Deerfield Beach Florida Police to talk to police.
The couple was arrested in January 2017.
Douthit said that when a forensic interviewer asked the boy about the rape, the boy said he thought at the time, “Why is my dad doing this to me?”
“Dad said to tell no one. I failed him. I just told you,” the boy told the interviewer, according to AL.com.
Douthit told the news site that the boy, who turned 13 years old the day of his father’s conviction, is doing well.
“The most terrible part of this is the little boy still doesn’t understand it’s not his fault,” Douthit said. “He still thinks he’s the bad guy. It’s heartbreaking.”