One-time daycare operator charged

A man who once operated a daycare facility in Arcadia has been charged with felony repeated sexual assault of a child and causing a child to view a sex act.

Fifty-three-year-old Scott Paul Lambert of Fairburn, Ga., is accused of improperly touching and exposing himself to a child between 2008 and 2012 while he operated a daycare facility on Owen Street in Arcadia.

He is charged with at least three violations of first-degree sexual assault of the same child and causing a child under the age of 13 to listen or view a sex act. While being questioned by sheriff’s Investigator Erica Koxlein, Lambert reportedly admitted to some of the acts and expressed remorse, the deputy’s report says. 

The allegations came to light when the mother of the child victim called the sheriff’s department and said her child, upon hearing of Lambert’s planned trip back to Wisconsin, told of the alleged assaults, according to the criminal complaint. The child was seven when the acts allegedly began, court records say, and that they continued from 2008 through 2012.

The child said she did not talk about the assaults earlier because she feared her mother would kill the man, according to court records.

Lambert’s initial hearing in Trempealeau County Circuit Court is scheduled for Oct. 19. He was released on $4,000 cash bond.