The Gazebo Gazette

GULFPORT (GG) — Last week, Derrick Lee Bowie of Biloxi, Mississippi, pled guilty to Sexual Battery of a Child.  After accepting the plea, Circuit Court Judge Lisa P. Dodson imposed a thirty (30) year sentence for the sexual battery charge, with twenty-five (25) years to be served day-for-day in the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections. 

According to Assistant District Attorney Haley Necaise Broom, who prosecuted the case on behalf of the State, “The Gulfport Police Department was contacted by Child Protective Services regarding the alleged sexual battery of a fifteen-year-old victim. Information provided indicated that the victim had given birth to a child at Gulfport Memorial Hospital. When the baby was born, the alleged father was identified as Derrick Bowie; however, the defendant denied being the father. Buccal swabs were collected from both the defendant and the infant, and DNA test results showed a 99.99997% probability that the defendant was the father of the child.” 

During both his interview with the Gulfport Police Department and at the plea hearing,  “Bowie ultimately admitted to engaging in sexual acts with the victim, but attempted to minimize his culpability by stating he was under the influence of drugs during that period and that he perceived the victim as having come on to him,” said ADA Broom. 

In response to the Bowie’s statement that he had “messed up his whole life,” Judge Dodson remarked, “I’m pretty sure you probably messed up the life of [the victim] as well. As a fifteen-year-old, she became a mother…I’m sure that it destroyed her high school years, where she should have been young and carefree.” 

Judge Dodson sentenced Bowie to thirty (30) years for the sexual battery charge and suspended five (5) years, leaving twenty-five (25) years to serve, day-for-day, in the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections. “No child should ever be forced to endure what this  young victim experienced. While no sentence can undo the trauma she suffered, we hope this conviction provides the victim and her family some measure of closure and the beginning of healing,” said ADA Haley Necaise Broom.