Man charged with raping 7-year-old

PALMER — A Wasilla man is facing three serious charges after Alaska State Troopers allege he raped a 7-year-old girl.

Stephen Henry Nickoli, 24, was arrested Saturday, charged with first-degree sexual abuse of a minor, first-degree sexual assault and kidnapping — all of which are unclassified felonies in Alaska law — the most serious category on the books.

According to an affidavit investigator Shannon Fore filed in the case against Nickoli, a call came in at 4:25 a.m. to respond to a home in the subdivision south of Bogard Road just north of Cottonwood and Finger Lakes.

Based on conversations with Nickoli and three witnesses, a narrative coalesces in Fore’s affidavit.

At around 4 a.m. Nickoli had called for a ride home from the Palmer Carrs store.

Upon arriving home he went to his room, but people in the house soon heard him rustling around. One went to his room and saw him having sex with the 7-year-old girl, according to the affidavit.

The child told Fore that she’d been sleeping in another room of the house when Nickoli came in, picked her up, covered her mouth with his hand and carried her to his room.

Nickoli, over the course of two interviews, told Fore he’d held the child in the room against her will.

“She couldn’t leave because he wouldn’t let her,” Fore wrote.

A charge of kidnapping, according to charging documents, requires that Nickoli restrained the girl in order to sexually assault her.

Nickoli told investigators that the girl told him to stop.

A charge of first-degree sexual assault requires that Nickoli had sex with the girl without her consent. First-degree sexual abuse of a minor requires only that sex occurred and that Nickoli was older than 16 and the girl younger than 13.

“Stephen admitted to drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana at a party and then Stephen stated that he did not remember how he got home,” Fore wrote. “Stephen said that it had been a few months since he had been able to see his girlfriend and watching a pornographic movie wasn’t ‘doing it for him.’”

Later, upon being discovered, Nickoli said, he tried to jump out a window in the garage but one of the people in the house stopped him.

Nickoli was jailed at the Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility. Troopers report that his bail was set at $500,000. Jail records Monday afternoon showed he was still there.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.