Joseph Horovsky, a 21-year-old resident of 11 Wasserman Drive, was arrested Wednesday and charged with lewd and lascivious molestation, and today, in a filing by the State Attorney’s Office, was charged with molestation of a child younger than 12, a felony punishable by up to life ion prison. He was placed under arrest at his home and booked at the Flagler County jail on no bond.
The Flagler County Sheriff’s Office’s investigation began in June 2023 when the agency received reports involving five victims, all of them pointing to Horovsky as the suspect. The arrest on Wednesday was based on alleged assaults against one girl, an 11-year-old relative of Horovsky who told investigators that Horovsky had been touching her inappropriately over the previous two to three years. She cited “approximately” five incidents, according to Horovsky’s arrest report.
All the alleged incidents took place at the W-Section house, the most recent one in the summer of 2022 when the girl, 10 at the time, was playing video games in a bedroom. Horovsky allegedly sat next to her and reached into her pants. On another occasion he allegedly did likewise after she had stepped out of the shower and gone into a bedroom wrapped in a towel. The alleged victim told investigators she recalled other incidents but didn’t remember details.
Less than two weeks later the alleged victim sat for a forensic interview with a member of the University of Florida First Coast Child Protection Team, which conducts such interviews in settings and in methods designed to avoid leading or suggestive questions, leaving it to the child to initiate all descriptions.
Flagler County Sheriff’s detective Adam Gossett led the criminal investigation. Gossett in his arrest affidavit reported that a friend of Horovsky who’d known him since they were in fifth grade had spent a week with Horovsky in Orlando in May 2023, then at Horovsky’s house in palm Coast for a few days, when Horovsky told him there was a police report on him. According to Gossett’s report, Horovsky “admitted to [his friend] that he had been touching one of his family members for years.” After Horovsky told his friend who he had been touching, his friend cut off all contact with him.
In May 2024, an individual referred to as a “confidential informant” in the arrest affidavit met Horovsky at his house, when Horovsky allegedly “made additional admissions of guilt,” describing incidents of touching that echoed the descriptions by the girl. But he said it was “stuff that happened many, many, many years ago,” when he was 14 or 15.
It is not uncommon for the State Attorney’s Office to file an information document that revises the initial charge or adds further charges, as happened in this case. Nor is it uncommon for yet more charges to be added as a case proceeds.
