Woman, 33, held in rape of 15-year-old boy

Woman, 33, held in rape of 15-year-old boy
By Christopher Seward

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution



A warrant accuses Janelle Denise Goforth, 33, of Decatur, of statutory rape and child molestation of a 15-year-old boy in 2011.


A DeKalb County woman was behind bars Wednesday, accused of raping a teenage boy, then continuing a sexual relationship that resulted in a baby that may have been fathered by the youth, according to an arrest warrant.

The warrant, obtained by Channel 2 Action News, accuses Janelle Denise Goforth, 33, of Decatur of statutory rape and child molestation of the then 15-year-old boy.

Goforth was booked into the county jail Monday, where she remained Wednesday. Bond was set at $1,000 on each count, according to jail records.

Goforth family members reached Wednesday declined to comment.

According to the arrest warrant and an Atlanta Journal-Constitution interview Wednesday with the teenager's guardian, Goforth was caught with the youth in April 2011 and warned that he was under the age of 16, the age of consent in Georgia.

Tia Stephens, the guardian, said she discovered her nephew, a ninth-grader, trying to sneak Goforth out of Stephens’ back door. The AJC’s policy is not to name alleged victims of sex crimes.

When she confronted Goforth, Stephens said the woman told her the teenager said he was 18 years old.

“I told her he was 15,” Stephens recalled. “She said she was 32.”

Stephens said she didn't call the police because she only saw the woman leaving her home. She ordered Goforth to stay away from her nephew and hadn’t seen her again until January.

In January, Stephens said, Goforth’s mother gave her the “shocking” news that her daughter was in labor at DeKalb Medical Center and was about to deliver her nephew’s baby.

The baby boy was born Jan. 9. Stephens said she and her nephew last saw the baby on Jan. 22, the teenager’s 16th birthday, when Goforth brought the baby to her home and spent the day there.

Stephens said Wednesday she wants two things to happen: a DNA test to determine that the now 2 1/2-month-old child is her nephew’s, and Goforth punished for allegedly sexually abusing the teenager.

Stephens said Goforth has awarded guardianship of the baby to Goforth's uncle and his wife.

Stephens said she wants custody of the baby if the paternity test shows her nephew is the father. Her nephew had a DNA test nearly two weeks after the child was born, but Stephens is waiting for DNA test results on Goforth and the child.

Stephens, 30, said she became her nephew’s guardian in 2004 after the death of his mother, her older sister. The boy was 8 at the time.

Whether she gains custody or not, she wants Goforth punished.

“The baby looks just like my nephew,” Stephens said. “But she’s still wrong. I want her to be treated as if she was a male and it was a 15-year-old girl. It’s no difference to me.”

Stephens said Goforth told her the baby is her seventh child, and that Goforth’s mother has custody of five of the children and the woman's uncle has the sixth child.

Goforth insists she’s in love with her nephew, Stephens said.

“‘He wants to be together with me,’” Stephens said the woman told her. “I said, ‘Something is really wrong with you.'"

zthatzmanz28 wrote:Equal opportunity? Why does society think that only men are capable of sex crimes? It seems that male perpetrators are presented as being much more evil and manipulative and female perpetrators are almost presented with an apologetic slant?