Vaisey Howells Dual Mug.JPG

Stephen M. Howells II and Nicole F. Vaisey were charged Friday by the St. Lawrence County Sheriff's Office with kidnapping two Amish girls from a roadside stand earlier this week.

(St. Lawrence County Sheriff's Office )

CANTON, N.Y. -- Two Amish girls who were kidnapped from a roadside vegetable stand in rural northern New York were sexually assaulted during their 24 hours in captivity.

St. Lawrence County District Attorney Mary Rain confirmed Saturday that the girls, ages 7 and 12, were sexually assaulted by Nicole F. Vaisey, 25, and Stephen M. Howells II, 39. Both are charged with two counts of first-degree kidnapping.

At a news conference Saturday, Sheriff Kevin Wells said the couple had carefully plotted the crime and "victimized" the girls during their abduction.

"The motive was to take the girls from their home and victimize them," Wells said.

He declined to provide further details about how the girls were victimized or what went into the plot to kidnap them. But he said the couple had been prowling for easy targets and might have planned to abduct other children. More charges are possible against the couple.

Howells and Vaisey were arrested Friday on charges that they kidnapped two Amish girls off their family farm in Heuvelton, near the Canadian border, on Wednesday night. The girls were set free by their captors Thursday night in the town of Richville, 20 miles from their family's farm.

Wells said the girls were held at the home of Howells and Vaisey at 1380 County Route 21 during their captivity.

Neither Howells nor Vaisey has been been arrested previously, he said. Howells is a registered nurse at Claxton-Hepburn Medical Center in Ogdensburg and Vaisey is a dog groomer. They have been a couple for about a year and a half, he said.

Wells said the two victims were able to give investigators descriptions of their kidnappers and the house where they were held. That information helped investigators zero in on Howells and Vaisey, he said.

A lawyer for Vaisey, Bradford C. Riendeau, told The New York Times that he planned to argue in court that Vaisey was in an abusive and submissive relationship with Howells, and that Vaisey was not the lead person in the kidnapping.

"She appears to have been the slave and he was the master," Riendeau told The Times.

Rain said that Vaisey and Howells acted together, and did not characterize Vaisey as an unwilling participant.

"We are confident that she was equally involved in the allegations as he was."

Rain said that authorities were continuing to investigate and that despite the trauma the girls had endured, the outcome was still a positive one.

"The happy ending is that they came home alive," she said.

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