Guy J. Turcotte
BY MELINDA J. OVERSTREET
GLASGOW NEWS 1
Many elements were the same or very similar in the respective accounts each party provided of interactions between a Glasgow Police Department detective and a woman who has petitioned the court for an interpersonal protective order against him.
It is certain differences in the details, along with legal definitions, that will determine whether that IPO is issued, though.
The two appeared in Family Court, a division of Circuit Court, in the Barren County Courthouse on Wednesday morning for a hearing to determine that matter. The petitioner and Guy Turcotte do not have a familial or other relationship other than his being a customer at her place of work, according to both the petition and their testimonies in court, but because the type of allegation falls under the same general category as domestic violence, the case goes through Family Court.
The petitioner stated that during his visits to her workplace last month, first to check on pricing for a service and then to drop off an item to be serviced and then to retrieve it, Turcotte made an inappropriate comment how he could see why someone might want to kidnap her because she’s cute, after she had mentioned the subject of kidnapping; he signed in the item with a heart-shape, a U and his first initial; and he later touched her inappropriately by having his hand on the front of her left upper thigh, immediately below where the thigh joins the groin area. She demonstrated this positioning in court.
“I froze; I didn’t know what else to do,” she said later.
Turcotte testified that he told her, “I can see why a cute little thing like you would want to carry a handgun for protection.” His attorney, Ben Rogers, presented receipts from a store Turcotte had visited at least five times in the past three months that he had signed in a similar fashion, and Turcotte said he did it that way because his identity has been stolen in the past. Turcotte said he signed the receipt for the service where the petitioner works. He testified that she came and stood next to him, to his left, and he put his arm around her with his hand on her left side, below her armpit and above her hip, demonstrating his version of the positioning on himself, “and squeezed her” as he repeatedly thanked her for doing an awesome job. He said there was no malicious intent.
“Eight o’clock that night, I get officers at my house saying I inappropriately touched her,” Turcotte testified.
Rogers had also introduced a text message from the petitioner to her employer in which advised that she was going to file a complaint against Turcotte. In it, she states, similarly to what was in the petition, “[H]e grabbed me around the waist with his rand [sic] right below my panty line and held me tight against him for way too long. … I just wanted to let you know because it’s had me a mess all day.” She also mentioned that it had her “a bit scared.”
Rogers had called as a witness a woman who works at the store those receipts were from, and she testified that Turcotte had hugged her and others at the store on multiple occasions. Rogers also attempted to enter into evidence described as photos of Turcotte with his arm or arms around different women at public events, but Pence said they were not relevant because what may have been appropriate in one situation would not necessarily mean it’s appropriate in another.
The petitioner said two other employees witnessed at least part of what she was alleging, but neither could be there for the court proceeding, so they had submitted written statements.
When the petitioner had the opportunity to question Turcotte, she asked how he perceived someone as being uncomfortable.
“Usually when someone’s uncomfortable, they shy away from you or they put their hand up and say, ‘Please don’t get in my space.’ … I’ve had people say that they don’t want me to hug,” he said. “You never showed any indication of that.”
Turcotte said his hand was “nowhere near where she said,” and he disputed that he hugged her for several seconds, stating it was a “quick second and a half.”
Rogers asked Turcotte how tall he is, to which he replied, about 6 feet. The petitioner had stated earlier that she’s just shy of 4 feet, 10 inches tall.
Given the opportunity for any other questions, the petitioner asked Turcotte, as her voice began to quiver:
“Did you ask permission to touch me?”
“No,” he replied.
Rogers, both in court and in a “Fact of the Case” memorandum, said that, in pursuing an IPO, the petitioner must prove, by a preponderance of the evidence that she was a victim of sexual assault at Turcotte’s hands, and he contends that the alleged behavior would not meet the legal definition of sexual assault. He made a motion just before Turcotte testified to have the petition dismissed for that reason.
“I think that the evidence that was submitted is sufficient enough for the court to [decide] whether or not sexual assault has occurred, given the area of identified touching,” Judge Mica Pence said.
And that is the crux of what she will have to determine.
As she had told the parties early in the proceeding would likely occur, Pence said she would take the matter under consideration so she could carefully review the statutes and evidence before making a decision.
In the meantime, she instructed Turcotte to not have any contact or communication, with the petitioner.
In total, not including a brief recess before the third-party witness and Turcotte testified, the proceeding took just more than an hour.
Turcotte was originally hired by the city in March 2011 as chief of the police department. He stepped down from that position, but stayed with the department, just as the mayor who hired him was ending her term in office. He said in court that he believed it was November 2020 when he became a detective. He ran unsuccessfully for the position of Barren County sheriff last year.
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