Abuse victim to ex-airport cop: ‘You were my monster in the closet’

A former Dayton airport police sergeant said nothing in court Wednesday when he was sentenced to probation for a misdemeanor public indecency charge after being indicted related to alleged sex acts involving a 12-year-old in 1998.

But Christopher Mohn, 43, heard an earful from his victim, who addressed the court during a victim impact statement.

The man told Montgomery County Common Pleas Court Judge Steven Dankof that Mohn was like two sides of a coin — light and dark — because Mohn was a friend with similar interests.

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“You were my monster in the closet, the creature under my bed,” the man said. “You were the secret in my journal written in ciphered code, locked in a vault for fear someone would learn my darkest secret.

“The secret is that you sexually molested me for multiple years, and I was a cowardly fool for letting it happen.”

Mohn had pleaded guilty on March 5 by bill of information to masturbation in the physical proximity of a minor. Dankof sentenced Mohn to community control for up to five years.

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The man said he may have stayed silent but felt differently after his daughters were born and that someone could harm them.

“The thick and ubiquitous sense of dread of the thought of my children near you gave me anxiety so bad I could see my heart beat through my T-shirt,” he said. “It felt like my chest was on fire, and the mental image of you holding my girl was a nightmare come reality.”

Along with the conviction for the second-degree misdemeanor charge, Mohn also must undergo a sex offender assessment, surrender his Ohio law enforcement certification and pay restitution. Dankof said attorneys have two weeks to try to reach an amount.

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Mohn was indicted in April 2018 on one count of gross sexual imposition against a child younger than 13, a third-degree felony, after a man alleged Mohn assaulted him as many as 30 times when the man was a teenager in the late 1990s.

Mohn’s accuser was a family friend who told detectives the abuse started when he was 12 in 1997 and continued for four or five years.

The case brought by Huber Heights police involved what prosecutors call a “late disclosure.”

RELATED: Dayton airport police sergeant indicted for old child sex crime

The victim told the judge he began to feel guilty “that my silence could be allowing another person to experience the same thing or worse.”

Huber Heights police set up a July 28, 2017, recorded phone call between Mohn and his accuser, who described the allegations and Mohn then said: “I did that and there is no excuses for it, but I just really want you to know it was never your fault,” court documents said.

Court documents said that when a detective questioned Mohn about the complainant’s allegations, Mohn’s “voice took on a slight edge. However, (Mohn) denied that any sexual activity occurred and continued to calmly and coherently respond to” the detective’s questions.

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When asked about the complainant, Mohn told a detective he had no intention of retaliating. “I’m done with him. I’m done with this whole thing,” Mohn said, according to court records.

In overruling Mohn’s motion to suppress, Dankof wrote that a detective was not required to stop questioning Mohn during an interview because Mohn was not in custody.

Mohn, then a sergeant with Dayton Airport Police, was placed on paid leave in December 2017. Mohn, who also used to work as a corrections officer with the Dayton Human Rehabilitation Center, was fired in May 2018.

“You’ve been exposed,” the man told Mohn, offering forgiveness. “You cannot hide in the closet any longer. Both my facade, and yours, is over.”

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