Molest charges dropped, Chicago man admits confining girl

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Updated: March 3, 2012 11:24AM

Lake Superior Court Judge Salvador Vasquez sentenced a Chicago man to six years in prison for confining a girl in Hammond.

Bernard Lamar Simmons, 28, admitted he took the girl into his bedroom and closed and locked the door so she couldn’t leave. She was 11 at the time when a family friend came into the home and tried to get into the bedroom but found the door locked. When Simmons finally opened the door, the girl was in a nightgown on the bed crying.

The girl, who is 15 now, testified Simmons began giving her pills to make her sleepy and began molesting her when she was young.

The girl said she told her mother but her mother continued her relationship with Simmons.

Defense attorney Samuel Cappas argued for leniency in light of his client’s low IQ and his lack of prior criminal convictions other than for traffic offenses.

Deputy prosecutor Catherine Breitweiser-Hurst asked for the maximum eight-year sentence and said Simmons groomed the girl so that he could repeatedly molest her. “He preyed on a child, a child who trusted him,” she said.

Simmons did not admit to molesting the girl. Three child molesting charges were dismissed under terms of the plea agreement.