NJ Supreme Court Upholds Bridgewater Man's 30-Year Sentence In Child Sex Assault Case

BRIDGEWATER, NJ — The New Jersey Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against Bridgewater resident Arthur Wildgoose Jr., ending his bid for a new legal challenge to his sentence for sexually assaulting a 12-year-old Manville girl.

Wildgoose, now 42, was first arrested in January 2016 after Manville police and the Somerset County Prosecutor's Office investigated a report that he had an improper relationship with the girl involving cellphone communications, according to Patch's original coverage of the case. The girl later told a detective she had been sexually assaulted by Wildgoose in Manville.

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According to the Supreme Court's opinion, Wildgoose met the girl's mother in December 2014, when both were coaching fourth-grade basketball together. He was 31 at the time. Over the following months, he began visiting the mother's house regularly and, by that spring, was sleeping over, sometimes with his own children present and sometimes without. The court wrote that the mother "developed a romantic interest in defendant" but the two never had a romantic or sexual relationship.

The opinion states that, unknown to the mother, Wildgoose began building a relationship with her daughter. By October 2015, he had asked the girl to be his girlfriend, and she said yes. The girl testified that she and Wildgoose exchanged "I love you" and sent each other sexual text messages, and that Wildgoose told her not to tell her mother about the relationship.

On Nov. 13, 2015, Wildgoose and his children stayed overnight at the family's home, sleeping in the basement along with the girl and her younger sister. According to the girl's testimony cited in the opinion, she woke in the middle of the night to Wildgoose pulling her off the air mattress where she'd been sleeping and onto the bed where he was lying and assaulted her. The opinion states that the next day, Wildgoose gave the girl an emergency contraceptive pill.

The girl's mother grew suspicious after the girl repeatedly asked if Wildgoose could sleep over on a specific night, and after she found a text message on her daughter's phone in which Wildgoose told the girl to "delete everything." She called police to report a possible improper relationship. On Dec. 28, 2015, the girl told her mother that Wildgoose had sexually assaulted her and she gave a statement to police.

A Somerset County grand jury indicted Wildgoose in 2016. Prosecutors offered him a plea deal that would have meant 25 years in prison, with 18 years before he could be considered for parole.

Wildgoose turned it down and went to trial, where a jury convicted him of aggravated sexual assault and endangering the welfare of a child. Because the victim was under 13, state law required a minimum sentence of 25 years without parole; the judge sentenced him to 30 years.

Wildgoose's first appeal, which argued there were errors in the case against him and that his sentence was too harsh, was rejected. He then asked a lower court to reopen his case and throw out his sentence, arguing that state rules limiting how lenient a plea deal prosecutors can offer after an indictment were unfair and unconstitutional.

A judge turned him down, ruling he'd waited too long to raise the issue. In 2024, a state appeals court disagreed and sent the case back for a closer look, saying it was possible Wildgoose had been treated unfairly. That appeals court also set a new rule requiring prosecutors statewide to explain their reasoning whenever they wait until after an indictment to offer a plea deal.

The Supreme Court overturned that decision. In a unanimous opinion, the justices wrote that Wildgoose and his lawyers "were well aware of the existence of the Guidelines" governing plea deals back when he filed his first appeal, and could have raised the issue then. The court also found no evidence he'd actually been treated unfairly, writing that "defendant, who did not even accept the plea offer in this case, and who maintained his innocence throughout his proceedings, simply has not made that showing."

The justices did note that the plea deal Wildgoose was offered technically fell short of what state law required — it should have required about three more years before parole eligibility than what was offered.

But because Wildgoose never accepted the deal, the court said "he has suffered no harm or injustice from the plea offer," and asked prosecutors statewide to be more careful about that kind of error going forward.

Wildgoose's 30-year sentence stands.

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