07-04-2025
Appeals court upholds child sex conviction for Wilkes-Barre man
Apr. 7—A panel of the Pennsylvania Superior Court upheld the conviction and decades long sentence for a Wilkes-Barre man who was found guilty by a Luzerne County jury of raping a girl in 2020 and 2021.
Bryan Nee, 35, challenged evidence allowed by Judge David W. Lupas to be used during the trial related to the girl's forensic interview and medical examine at the Luzerne County Children's Advocacy Center.
Nee, in his appeal, claimed the testimony by a forensic interviewer was "hearsay," and evidence presented during the three day trial held in January 2023, was insufficient to convict him of rape of a child and unlawful contact with a minor.
The three member panel of the Superior Court in a nine-page opinion rejected Nee's appeal citing Lupas correctly allowed the nurse practitioner and forensic interviewer to testify under the state's Tender Year's Doctrine.
After Nee was convicted, Lupas sentenced Nee to to 20 to 40 years in state prison and was deemed a sexually violent predator subject to lifetime registration under the state's Sexual Offender Registration and Notification Act.
During the trial, Assistant District Attorney Carly Levandoski and former assistant district attorney John Carroll relied on Nee being diagnosed with having oral HSV-1 and genital HSV-2 herpes and the testimony of a nurse practitioner who treated the girl.
The girl, then 5, was diagnosed as having genital herpes when her mother took her to an urgent care facility believing the child had a rash.
During the forensic interview, which a recording was played to the jury, the girl told the interviewer Nee took baths with her and told her to keep it a secret.
Levandoski during the trial told the jury a girl at 5-years-old should not have a sexually transmitted disease and should not know certain body parts.
