Volusia County, FL – A Volusia County man has been found guilty of taking 3 runaway girls from a Winter Haven group home in 2015 and bringing them to Ormond Beach, where he committed unlawful sexual acts with one of them.
On August 9, 2015, 3 girls went missing from a group home in Winter Haven, FL. The girls were in contact with Michael Abel Boland, 69, on Facebook and on one of the girls’ grandmother’s phone. They told Boland that they had just run away from their group home and that they needed to be picked up.
Boland drove to Polk County to pick up the girls and take them back to his home in Ormond Beach. Boland told the girls a fabricated story to tell law enforcement if they were stopped together. At his home, Boland sexually battered one of the girls in his bedroom. The victim said she was locked in the room for hours without food.
Boland then moved the girls to hotels in Ormond Beach and Daytona Beach, continually reminding them to tell the fabricated story if they were to encounter police. There, Boland repeatedly sexually battered one girl and supplied the minors with alcohol and drugs so they would cooperate and stay silent.
Another girl said she got so intoxicated that when she woke up, there was a man she didn’t know sitting on the bed, and she could not remember what had happened while she was intoxicated. That girl later turned herself into Holly Hill police.
Boland later hit a woman with his car trying to leave after she and her husband confronted him at a hotel in Ormond Beach about their missing daughter who had been with Boland before.
After hearing the case for 5 days, a Volusia County jury came out with the verdict in two hours. Michael Abel Boland was found guilty of Unlawful Sexual Activity with a Minor, 3 counts of Deprive Custody of Minor, and Contributing to the Delinquency of a Child. He was found not guilty of Leaving the Scene of Crash with Injury.
“The defendant identified and exploited young and troubled girls to fuel his demented and perverse lifestyle,” said State Attorney RJ Larizza. “His predatory nature and violent tendencies make him a dangerous threat to the citizens of the 7th Circuit and beyond. Now we can seek maximum prison time to ensure that he doesn’t pose a threat to our family, friends and neighbors any longer.”
(Boland mugshot courtesy of Volusia County Corrections)
Photo courtesy of dizain and Shutterstock.com.
Copyright Southern Stone Communications 2017.
