Ex-Lancaster cop held for court on attempted rape charges; additional charges dismissed

• By Dan Nephin/LNP | LancasterOnline

A district judge dismissed a rape and a statutory rape charge against former Lancaster city police officer Andrew Scott Selby, but held an attempted rape and attempted statutory rape charge for trial following a preliminary hearing Tuesday.

Manheim Township District Judge Courtney Monson said she based her decision on the evidence presented during the hearing by the woman who said Selby assaulted her around 30 years ago.

The woman testified that she was about 12 or 13 and was babysitting for her aunt’s friend, Carolyn Rice, when Selby assaulted her at Rice’s efficiency apartment on Martha Avenue.

The woman testified that she had been asleep after Rice came home and got up to use the bathroom when Rice was asleep. When she was walking back from the bathroom to where she was sleeping — either a couch or in bed — she said she saw a Black man sitting on a chair in the kitchen wearing only underwear and he had an erection. She did not know who he was.

He asked her to sit with him and when she indicated she would not, she said he grabbed her.

“He reached out and just grabbed me and put me on his lap” and began moving against her, she said.

She said she had clothes on — either a nightgown or shorts and a shirt — and she could feel him against her, but not inside her.

Rice then walked in and asked what was going on and Selby let her go, she said.

The woman said she went back to where she was sleeping.

“I just remember feeling petrified and just sick to my stomach and I just laid down,” she testified.

Her testimony differed from Rice’s testimony.

Rice testified that the alleged victim was not babysitting, but instead that she, her baby and the alleged victim had been over at Selby’s cousin’s house hanging out and Selby came back to her apartment with them.

She said she heard whispering and walked into a section of the apartment where Selby and the alleged victim had been sitting on a couch and it looked like the alleged victim had been crying.

“She looked really scared. She just had this look in her face. I didn’t know what was going on,” Rice said.

Both the alleged victim and Rice said they never spoke of what happened.

The alleged victim said she did not know Selby and had never seen another Black man at Rice’s apartment. Rice said Selby was the only Black man who was at her apartment when the alleged victim was there.

Under cross-examination by Selby’s attorney, Paul Walker, Rice reiterated that Selby and the woman had been on the sofa, but then said she didn’t remember: “I’m pretty sure it was not a kitchen chair,” she said.

Rice also said the alleged victim was not on Selby’s lap when she walked in and that he had clothes on, hedging that by saying, “I guess he had clothes on.”

Walker focused on inconsistencies between the accounts in his arguments to Monson.

“We have two completely different versions of events that occurred,” Walker said.

However, Monsoon said credibility is not an issue at the preliminary hearing level.

At a preliminary hearing, prosecutors must present sufficient evidence that a crime was committed and that the defendant probably is responsible and, therefore, that a jury or judge should hear the case in county court.

Multiple cases

Dismissing the rape and statutory rape charges has little practical effect on the case because there is no difference in grading. Rape and attempted rape are both first-degree felonies, and statutory rape and attempted statutory rape are both second-degree felonies.

And Selby has four separate criminal charges held for trial dating to his time on the police force in the late 1990s. They include rape, child rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, sex assault and other related charges.

All the charges against Selby stem from an investigation that began in March, when a woman told city police that Selby had raped her in the late 1990s when she was 16. That led police to discover an investigation in which two other girls said Selby assaulted them.

Following his arrest in May, two other women — including the witness at Tuesday’s hearing — told police that Selby assaulted them when they were girls.

Selby, 54, was a police officer from May 1995 to August 2000, when he resigned.

Walker also asked Monson to reduce Selby’s bail, noting that a county judge set bail in three cases on which Selby had initially been held with no bail following his May arrest. In those cases, Selby’s bail is 10% of $50,000 each, meaning Selby would have to post $15,000 cash.

Monson kept bail at $1 million in the case before her, which was filed after the initial charges. And he’s being held on $500,000 in another case. Walker anticipates asking for reduced bail before the judge overseeing the cases.

Selby is being held at the Chester County Prison.

YWCA Lancaster runs a 24-hour sexual assault hotline, 717-392-7273, that connects callers to free, confidential counseling and therapy services for community members impacted by sexual abuse, harassment or assault.