By Shereen Siewert
WAUSAU — A former Wausau resident is facing multiple child sex charges after two girls told police he played a striptease card game with them and forced them to pose naked while he was babysitting them.
Douglas Thew, 52, now of Wonewoc, is being held in the Marathon County Jail on a $5,000 cash bond. Thew faces felony charges filed June 29 in Marathon County Circuit Court of child enticement and four counts of exposing genitals to a child.
The victims were age 10 and 12 in 2011, when the alleged assaults occurred.
According to the criminal complaint:
One of the alleged victims, now age 15, told police in a June forensic interview that she and the other alleged victim were being cared for by Thew on several occasions in 2011 when he asked the girls to play a card game. In the card game, the girls were asked to take turns drawing cards from the deck. Each time one of the girls drew a face card, they were asked to remove a piece of clothing. Once the girls were naked, Thew asked them to pose on the floor in “magazine poses” while he sat on a couch and touched himself. The alleged assaults happened in an apartment on Grand Avenue and in a New Lisbon home. Thew told the alleged victims he liked to play the game because “sometimes I get lonely.”
The girl told police she didn’t report Thew sooner because she didn’t understand that the card game was “wrong” until she was older.
Thew, who has no prior criminal convictions, is expected to appear in court Wednesday for a preliminary hearing. The charges carry a combined maximum prison sentence of 39 years along with fines of up to $140,000.
