A Baltimore County jury found a day care van driver accused of sexually abusing a girl guilty of second-degree rape and other charges Friday evening.

Police arrested retired Baltimore Police officer James Weems Jr., 59, in July 2022, after his then-wife Shanteari Weems shot him in a Washington, D.C., hotel room when authorities shut down her Owings Mills daycare, Lil Kidz Kastle.

After five hours of deliberations Friday, jurors found Weems guilty on all six counts: two counts of second-degree rape, three counts of sexual abuse of a minor and one count of displaying obscene matter to a minor between March 2020 and July 2022.

He will return to the Baltimore County Detention Center until his Jan. 8 sentencing.

Prosecutors filed for enhanced penalties in the case because of the victim’s age, meaning he faces a minimum of 15 years without the possibility of parole.

The trial began Tuesday in Baltimore County Circuit Court.

Jurors didn’t hear that grand juries had indicted Weems on another 33 counts, including similar charges related to the alleged sexual abuse of three other children. This week’s trial dealt only with charges related to a single victim.

Attorneys for Weems could not be reached immediately for comment on the verdict.

Weems’ ex-wife, Shanteari, also testified earlier this week. Jurors weren’t told that she shot him in a D.C. hotel room in July 2022, shortly after the state closed her day care center, or that she is serving a prison sentence in a federal facility in Kentucky.

The investigation into James Weems began after relatives of a then-10-year-old girl noticed she was watching pornography on her aunt’s iPad on July 2, 2022, the girl’s mother and grandmother testified this week.

Alarmed, the adults loudly questioned her about who had shown her the videos. The girl told them that “Mr. James,” the van driver at Lil Kidz Kastle, had shown the pornography to her.

Now 12, the girl testified earlier this week that James Weems had also forced her to perform oral sex on him, both at the day care and in the van that dropped her off at school and picked her up in the afternoons.

The Baltimore Sun does not identify people who have been sexually abused without their consent.

In closing arguments, Deputy State’s Attorney Lisa Fox Dever described how she said James Weems took “slow, progressive steps” to gain the trust of a vulnerable girl and take advantage of her. Weems gave the girl snacks no one else received and gave her the coveted job of opening the van’s door, Weems’ ex-wife and family members testified.

In a rebuttal, Assistant State’s Attorney Zarena Sita said that Weems “groomed” the girl, the term experts use to describe how abusers form a relationship with a child before assaulting them.

“Many people warn their children to beware of strangers,” Dever said. “The reality is the person who is going to hurt your children isn’t going to be a stranger, it’s going to be someone they know, someone they like, someone they admire.”

Weems admitted on the stand Thursday that he watched pornography, including while children were inside the van, according to a clip prosecutors played Friday. He denied sexually abusing the girl.

“Why are you gonna show pornography to a child? Why are you gonna be watching it on a bus with kids?” Dever said.

She explained that even if jurors didn’t believe Weems had touched the girl, they could still find him guilty of sex abuse for having knowingly shown her the pornography and exploited her for his own benefit.

Dever argued that the girl had no reason to lie about the abuse. In a forensic interview on July 3, 2022, after she told her family Weems had abused her, the girl didn’t provide many details. But she did tell the interviewer that “Mr. James” had told her not to tell anyone and that she could go to jail, Dever said.

Dever said that while the girl wasn’t ready to talk during that early interview, after two years of therapy she was ready to share more details in court.

Thomas Pavlinic, one of Weems’ attorneys, argued that the girl had lied about the abuse when her family caught her watching pornography and that her accusations didn’t make logical sense.

“You can’t be swayed by emotions,” he told jurors.

Pavlinic said it didn’t make sense that Weems would sexually abuse the girl both in the van, where other children were nearby, and in the day care, with teachers present in the building. He acknowledged that the girl might have seen the pornography on Weems’ phone in the car, but argued that the state hadn’t proven that he showed it to her on purpose.

As an “honorably discharged Marine,” a former Baltimore Police officer and the father of two children who admitted to his addiction to pornography, jurors should believe Weems’ testimony, Pavlinic said.

He also criticized aspects of the police investigation, saying that investigators should have tried harder to access the day care’s camera system after an initial passcode Shanteari Weems provided didn’t work. Pavlinic also said police should’ve taken possession of the aunt’s tablet sooner.

He identified what he called “contradictions” in the girl’s testimony and suggested she was either repeating a 2-year-old lie or that her relatives or prosecutors had nudged her into telling a certain story.

“I have empathy for [the victim]. I think she’s a victim in this case, not of Mr. Weems, but of the system that put her through this,” Pavlinic said.

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