Women testify that a McLennan County man sexually abused them in homes in China Spring, West

WACO, Texas (KWTX) – Three women testified Tuesday that Scott Edward Vanzandt sexually abused them as teenagers at his China Spring and West residences.

Vanzandt, 57, a welder, is on trial in Waco’s 19th District Court on two counts of sexual contact with a child. The two charges are second-degree felonies punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

While Vanzandt is only on trial for the alleged abuse of one of the women, two other defendants – a family member and a friend of his daughter – also reported cases of abuse that occurred in their youth.

Prosecutors Tara Avants and Will Hix completed their case against Vanzandt on Tuesday afternoon, and defense attorney Brandon Luce will begin giving his defense testimony on Wednesday morning.

One of the women, now 20, testified she was 15 and met Vanzandt when she lived in the same China Spring neighborhood. She said Vanzandt’s daughter is grown and no longer lives there, and she and several other neighborhood kids hung out with Vanzandt at his garage gym.

One day in October 2019, Vanzandt called her and asked her to come over because he said he had a birthday present for her.

She said he gave her $20, hugged her and then fondled her breasts and genitals.

“I wasn’t really sure what was going on,” she told the jury. “I was just there.”

She said she left and went home and never returned to his house.

Eventually she told her parents and friends what had happened.

“I guess I’ve grown up and understand a little better now what happened,” she said.

Luce cross-examined her about her penchant for creative writing and her accounts of horrific nightmares about violent crimes that had happened to her and her family. The woman told Luce that she had been having the nightmares before Vanzandt’s abuse and that she had not imagined or imagined what had happened to her.

She told Hix in the forward that she had nothing open with Vanzandt and had no reason to make up the story.

“I told what happened because it needs to be told – because it happened,” she said

The second woman, now 29, said she made similar allegations against Vanzandt after learning of the first woman’s allegations that led to Vanzandt’s arrest.

She said they were living in West in April 2011. She was 16 and Vanzandt, a relative, was like a father figure to her.

She said her parents were out of town caring for their seriously ill brother, and she and Vanzandt were at his home on Davis Street in West.

He said Vanzandt groped her and she got up to get away from him.

“He was mad at me and said, ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ He acted like I had done something wrong in that moment,” she said.

The third woman, now 32, said she now realised that Vanzandt took advantage of her broken home and difficult childhood to enter into a sexual relationship in the West that began in 2005, when she was 13, and lasted until she was 16.

She testified that the relationship began when Vanzandt began stroking her arm and back while they watched “Shrek.”

“I didn’t think about it at first,” she said. “It felt weird. It didn’t feel right.”

The woman said they had regular sexual intercourse until she was old enough to realize that her behavior was wrong.

She said she never reported the abuse to law enforcement, but shared her experiences with the McLennan County District Attorney’s Office in June after Vanzandt was brought to trial.

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