A serial pervert in Augusta who got probation for publicly pleasuring himself to neighborhood children in January was caught again over the weekend, and he faces more serious charges this time.
Dennis Bernard Jennings, a 60-year-old felon with multiple stints in prison, was locked up Saturday for six counts of child molestation, all felonies. He was charged with one count for each of the children who saw him, including two boys, ages 7 and 11, and four girls, ages 7-13.
The arrest comes just two months after Judge Robert W. Hunter III slapped him on the wrist with probation after a guilty plea for public indecency, a misdemeanor. He got 90 days in jail two years ago from Judge Monique Walker for the same charge.
But this time, a neighbor on Brussels Street posted video online showing children playing in a yard next to Jennings on Saturday afternoon while the suspect is seen pleasuring himself in a chair on his front porch. A second video shows a Richmond County deputy arresting Jennings as the neighbor can be heard calling him “nasty” and “perverted.”
“Bye-bye! Bye-bye! Go to jail!” the neighbor shouts at Jennings as he’s placed in a patrol car.
The video of the crime racked up over 150 shares while the arrest video gained a similar number of shares on Facebook. “Lock that mf up and keep him there,” one person said. Another said, “He need to be under the jail.”
Richmond County authorities said Jennings was observed sitting outside his residence, facing the victims, exposing himself as he masturbated while looking in the children’s direction. The children, who were across the street in their front yard, ran in their house upset, and a parent came outside to record him.
In a report from the January 2025 incident, a mother called the cops to say she believed Jennings was “masturbating to her children through the window.” The woman said she was new to the area, but had heard multiple reports being made about Jennings.
In his Jan. 2 report, Deputy Justin LaCroix said he spoke to Jennings, and the man claimed that he did not masturbate to any children.
“Jennings stated he has been in court for similar incidents, but stated he has not and would never mess with children,” a Jan. 2 report says. “The video shows what appears to be Jennings in the front window in what appears to be pulling up a pair of shorts. I was not able to make out from the video if masturbation occurred. I did not observe any sexual activity in the video provided.”
But Jennings was subsequently charged and pleaded guilty in that case.
In the 2023 incident, a neighbor told Deputy Matthew Beach that she saw Jennings unbuckle his pants and pull out his penis before pleasuring himself for five minutes as children were playing nearby. She also took video, which took place on the same street as the others.
“Jennings stated that he had been sitting on the electrical box but that he had not been masturbating,” the 2023 incident report says. “When I confronted Jennings about the video footage, he became defensive and demanded to see proof that the video existed.”
In the patrol car, Jennings threatened to harass the neighbor who recorded him “until she moved out of the neighborhood, even after being shown the video evidence of himself masturbating.”
The suspect is a felon who has served four stints in prison since the 1990s. He served 16 years of a 20-year sentence before being released two years ago for aggravated assault, theft by receiving stolen property and interference with government property. A booking sheet lists him as unemployed.
The child molestation charges are labeled as non-aggravated. Jennings is being held without bond in the Charles B. Webster Detention Center.
