BETHEL, Vt. — The body of a missing 12-year-old Vermont girl was found Wednesday, hours after documents surfaced that accused her uncle of planning to initiate her into a child-sex ring, authorities said.
Brooke Bennett’s body was found about 4:45 p.m., not far from her uncle’s home, said State Police Director James Baker.
The uncle, Michael Jacques, who has been in custody since Sunday on sexual-assault charges involving another underage girl, is to be charged in federal court with kidnapping, police Sgt. Tara Thomas said.
Brooke was last seen alive with Jacques at a convenience store a week ago.
“The painful discovery of Brooke’s body today is tragic and heartbreaking,” Baker said. He called the death “clearly suspicious” but declined to give details before a planned briefing this morning.
Earlier Wednesday, in an affidavit unsealed in U.S. District Court in Burlington, the FBI said an unidentified 14-year-old girl told investigators she was present on June 25 when Jacques, 42, tricked Brooke into thinking she was going to a party and took her to his Randolph home to be initiated into a sex ring.
The girl said she was led to believe that the 12-year-old “would have sex with adult males” during the initiation.
The teenager said she and Brooke watched TV for a while before Jacques told her to leave and took his niece upstairs. The witness said she left the house with her boyfriend and didn’t see Brooke again.
The 14-year-old said she herself had been having sex with Jacques since she was 9, as part of the sex ring.
Brooks’s former stepfather, Raymond Gagnon, appeared in federal court Wednesday on an obstruction-of-justice charge in the case. He was denied bail and was held pending a Monday hearing.
