Boy testifies Waco man sexually abused him for years, threatened to beat him if he sought help

WACO, Texas (KWTX) - A 12-year-old boy reluctantly testified Tuesday that Perry Dwyane Dixon, a family member, sexually abused him for years and threatened to beat him if he reported it.

Dixon, 46, is on trial in Waco’s 19th State District Court on a charge of continuous sexual abuse of young children and is alleged to have abused the boy from January 2017 to May 2020 and his younger female relative.

Both of the children came into court clutching stuffed animals as they climbed onto the witness stand. While the boy finally described the abuse after initially declining to answer numerous questions from prosecutor Elizabeth Buice or saying he could not remember, the girl, who is now 8, also testified she could not remember and declined to answer.

At one point, she buried her face into the stuff animal and started crying.

Dixon remained stoic as the boy testified. However, he took off his glasses and wiped tears from his eyes during the girl’s testimony.

“It’s just hard for me because I don’t want to make (Dixon) sad,” she said. “…I really didn’t understand what he was trying to do to me… It’s hard because I just don’t want to say. I’m just not ready to talk.”

The boy said the first time Dixon abused him, he was taking a bath and Dixon climbed in with him. He described other incidents of abuse and told the jury that Dixon threatened to whip him with a paddle or a belt if he told anyone what he was doing to him.

In other prosecution testimony, Dr. Soo Battle, a pediatrician at the Advocacy Center for Crime Victims and Children, said she examined the boy when he was 9 and interviewed him about the abuse. She said the boy told her “something’s going on like child abuse,” and reported Dixon forced him to perform oral sex on him and kissed him on the mouth while Dixon masturbated.

The boy also told Battle that Dixon forced him to kiss his younger relative while Dixon masturbated in front of them. The boy told Battle that the girl reported the abuse to him.

“I don’t think he touched her as much as me because I’m a boy and I can’t have a baby,” the boy told Battle in June 2020.

Buice and prosecutor Will Hix rested their case against Dixon after calling Waco psychologist Lee Carter, who explained the many and varied dynamics of sexual abuse to the jury.

Carter said that 90 percent of children are sexually abused by someone they know, like a family member, adding that much of the sexual abuse of children goes unreported.

Defense attorney Darren Obenoskey will present Dixon’s case when the trial resumes Wednesday morning.

If convicted of continuous sexual abuse of young children, Dixon faces a minimum prison term of 25 years with no parole and a maximum life sentence with no parole.

Copyright 2023 KWTX. All rights reserved.