A 78-year-old man’s jailed in Plymouth County after he was arrested on Friday on charges of sexual assault and sexual exploitation by a school employee. D-C-I Special Agent Terry Klooster says 78-year-old Edwin Coughenour was picked up after an investigation that included the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, Sioux City Police, and authorities in the southeast Plymouth County town of Kingsley.
He says an investigation’s been going on since late June or early July. Seventy-year-old Edwin Dale Coughenour was arrested Friday around noon in Sioux City, by officers with the Kingsley Police department. He’s charged with both felony and misdemeanor counts of sexual exploitation by a school employee, and assault with intent to commit sexual abuse.
Klooster says, “allegations were made… that were given to the Plymouth County Attorney, who requested the D-C-I conduct an investigation.” The investigator can’t say who the victim was in this case, though news reports indicate that the coach was dogged by rumors for years. The sexual-misconduct investigation took about seven months. He’d been a coach and at one time teacher in Kingsley, a town of about 1,200, and had retired from the teaching job a while ago.
But the agent says Coughenour had kept on coaching at the Kingsley-Pierson school. Coughenour had created the girls’ softball program at Kingsley-Pierson half a century ago, and in 1987 he was named Coach of the Year by the National High School Coaches Association — but in midseason this year he quit coaching the 2006 softball team, and resigned in June. He posted bond and left the Plymouth County jail Friday afternoon.