Rep. Nancy Mace’s ex-fiancé and two others charged with sexual misconduct-related offenses

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Three men whom US Rep. Nancy Mace accused of being “PREDATORS” in an unprecedented House floor speech last year – including her ex-fiancé – were charged with sexual misconduct-related offenses Wednesday, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division said in a statement.

Brendan Patrick Bryant, 53, Mace’s ex-fiancé, was charged with voyeurism. John Douglas Osborne, 46, was charged with first-degree assault and battery and two counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct. Eric Bernard Bowman, 46, was charged with voyeurism, obstruction of justice and publishing the name of a victim of criminal sexual conduct, the agency said.

The three were charged in Charleston County and were booked into the Sheriff Al Cannon Detention Center, the agency said. The case will be prosecuted by the 9th Circuit Solicitor’s Office.

Bryant, Osborne and Bowman have posted bond and have been released from the detention center, according to Osborne’s attorney.

The affidavits allege that in October 2018 Osborne “unlawfully committed a sexual battery” against a 23-year-old woman who had “passed out” from alcohol use, while Bowman and Bryant “appear to take photographs and/or video of the Victim.”

The documents state an unnamed witness who was “watching a home security video feed … observed the incident,” obtained two still photos from the feed and wrote “an email/journal entry detailing the incident from her perspective.”

Bryant’s attorney told CNN on Wednesday Bryant “adamantly denies” the allegations and said he believes the “case should be contested and presented in the courtroom.”

The attorney also said Mace’s House floor speech “was full of falsehoods and blatant inconsistencies and Bryant adamantly denies any merit to any of those allegations and accusations.”

Osborne’s attorneys issued a statement Wednesday saying he “is innocent of the charges brought against him and intends to defend himself vigorously.”

CNN reached out to Bowman’s attorneys but did not immediately hear back. Last year, Bowman told CNN “no wrongdoing has been committed.”

The charges come more than a year after Mace, the Republican congresswoman from South Carolina, delivered a remarkable 53-minute speech on the House floor. After swearing on a Bible to tell the “whole truth,” she accused Bryant of “evil” crimes, including rape, and accused him and three other men of recording sex acts without consent. She displayed their names, photos and hometowns on a placard under an all-caps “PREDATORS.”

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc./Getty Images

Mace makes allegations of sexual abuse against multiple men from the House floor

“Mr. Speaker, I rise today to call out the cowards who think they can prey on women and get away with it,” she said in February 2025. “Today, I’m going scorched earth.”

In her speech, Mace alleged she found more than 10,000 hidden camera videos and photos on Bryant’s phone in November 2023. She said she had spent the past year “searching for victims” and “uncovered” assaults that spanned “over a decade, almost 20 years.”

Mace did not provide specific evidence of her claims, but she said she brought the case to state authorities for further investigation. The Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause generally protects speech on the House floor from libel laws.

At the time, Bryant’s representative sent CNN a statement denying all “criminal allegations.”

The speech was just one of a number of noteworthy moments for Mace, an outspoken political figure who has served in Congress since 2021.

She shared an emotional account of being raped as a teenager in a debate about an abortion bill in the South Carolina legislature before being elected to Congress. In her time in office, she has repeatedly sparked controversy by criticizing but then endorsing President Donald Trump , picking personal feuds with colleagues , clashing with the president over the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files and allegedly berating officers at an airport .

This election cycle, she ran for governor of South Carolina but finished a disappointing fifth in the Republican primary.

CNN reached out Wednesday to Mace, who has proposed legislation affirming “her commitment to protecting women and standing with survivors by advancing legislation to strengthen victims’ rights and hold sexual predators accountable.”

Marybeth Mullaney, an attorney for the then-23-year-old woman, shared the woman’s victim impact statement that was read aloud in court at the men’s bond hearing Wednesday. In the statement, the woman said she did not know what happened to her that night and only learned she had been sexually assaulted in April 2024.

“Since then, my sense of safety, privacy, and trust has been shattered. I constantly worry about being watched, followed, or secretly recorded,” she said.

She said her experience, and cases like the alleged 2024 gang rape at Cornell University , show the difficulty of holding powerful people and institutions accountable.

“I know this is only the first step toward these men taking accountability for what they did to me but it is a very significant step. All I wanted was the truth, the freedom to speak it, and the ability to live without fear,” she said.

One of the four men Mace named in her speech, Brian Musgrave, has not been charged. He denied wrongdoing in an interview with CNN last year, and his attorneys issued a statement Wednesday saying he and his family have “endured unimaginable distress and financial loss” since Mace “recklessly” accused him of significant sexual crimes.

“Obviously, Brian is happy not to have been criminally charged and not to be grouped with the others recently charged but it has opened up some pretty deep wounds,” attorneys Eric S. Bland and Ronald L. Richter Jr. said. “To this day Ms. Mace has never apologized to Brian and his family for what she falsely said about him. Quite frankly, she should have cleared his name long ago.”

The assault allegedly occurred in the early morning hours of October 26, 2018, at a house on Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina, according to court documents.

The victim, a 23-year-old woman, had consumed alcohol and was “so intoxicated she fell into the swimming pool” and was “unable to walk normally or speak cogently,” the documents state. She “passed out” on a sofa in the house, and while she was unconscious, Bryant, Osborne and Bowman agreed that Osborne would have sex with her, the court documents state.

Charleston County Sheriff's Office

Osborne then allegedly sexually assaulted her even though he “knew or should have known the Victim was unable to and did not provide consent,” the documents state. Bryant and Bowman “watched for the purpose of arousing or gratifying sexual desire,” the documents state.

In addition, Bowman faces charges of obstruction of justice and publishing the name of a victim of criminal sexual conduct dating to March 2025, weeks after Mace’s speech.

He allegedly did a “’factory’ reset” of his cellphone on March 23, 2025, just three days after South Carolina Law Enforcement Division agents executed a search warrant seeking the device and three days before he turned over his phone, according to court documents. In addition, he “did knowingly publish or cause to be published” the name of a woman the agency was investigating as an alleged victim of criminal sexual conduct on the social media platform X, the documents state.

CNN’s Sarah Ferris contributed to this report.

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

南卡罗来纳州执法部门在一份声明中表示，去年美国众议员南希·梅斯在众议院发表了一次史无前例的演讲，指责三名男子是“掠食者”，其中包括她的前未婚夫。周三，这三名男子被控犯有与性行为不端相关的罪行。

现年53岁的布伦丹·帕特里克·布莱恩特（Brendan Patrick Bryant）是梅斯的前未婚夫，他被控偷窥罪。现年46岁的约翰·道格拉斯·奥斯本（John Douglas Osborne）被控一级攻击罪和两项三级性犯罪。据该机构称，现年46岁的埃里克·伯纳德·鲍曼（Eric Bernard Bowman）被控偷窥罪、妨碍司法公正罪和公布性犯罪受害者姓名罪。

据该机构称，这三人已在查尔斯顿县被起诉，并被关押在阿尔·坎农警长拘留中心。此案将由第九巡回检察官办公室提起公诉。

据奥斯本的律师称，布莱恩特、奥斯本和鲍曼已缴纳保释金并从拘留中心获释。

宣誓书指控，2018 年 10 月，奥斯本“非法对一名因饮酒而“昏迷”的 23 岁女子实施了性侵犯”，而鲍曼和布莱恩特“似乎在拍摄受害者的照片和/或视频”。

文件显示，一名未具名的证人“正在观看家庭安全视频……目睹了这起事件”，从视频中获取了两张静止照片，并“以电子邮件/日记的形式，从她的角度详细描述了这起事件”。

科比的律师周三告诉 CNN，科比“坚决否认”这些指控，并表示他认为“此案应该在法庭上进行辩论和陈述”。

律师还表示，梅斯在众议院的演讲“充满了谎言和明显的矛盾之处，布莱恩特坚决否认这些指控和控诉有任何依据”。

奥斯本的律师周三发表声明称，他“对针对他的指控不认罪，并打算积极为自己辩护”。

CNN已联系鲍曼的律师，但尚未收到回复。去年，鲍曼曾告诉CNN“我没有做错任何事”。

这些指控是在南卡罗来纳州共和党女议员梅斯在众议院发表了长达53分钟的惊人演讲一年多之后提出的。梅斯在《圣经》上宣誓要说出“全部真相”后，指控科比犯有“邪恶”的罪行，包括强奸，并指控他和另外三名男子未经同意录制性行为。她将他们的姓名、照片和家乡展示在一块标语牌上，标语牌上用大写字母写着“掠食者”。

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc./Getty Images

梅斯在众议院议事厅对多名男子提出性虐待指控

“议长先生，我今天站在这里，就是要谴责那些以为可以欺凌女性而逍遥法外的懦夫，”她在2025年2月说道。“今天，我要采取零容忍态度。”

梅斯在演讲中声称，她在 2023 年 11 月在科比的手机上发现了 1 万多段隐藏摄像头拍摄的视频和照片。她说，过去一年她一直在“寻找受害者”，并“揭露”了“长达十余年，近 20 年”的性侵事件。

梅斯并未提供具体证据支持她的说法，但她表示已将此案提交州政府当局进行进一步调查。宪法中的言论或辩论条款通常保护众议院议事厅的言论免受诽谤法的约束。

当时，科比的代表向 CNN 发送了一份声明，否认所有“刑事指控”。

对于直言不讳的政治人物梅斯来说，这次演讲只是他众多值得关注的时刻之一。梅斯自 2021 年以来一直在国会任职。

在当选国会议员之前，她曾在南卡罗来纳州议会就一项堕胎法案进行辩论时，讲述了自己青少年时期被强奸的悲惨经历。在任期间，她屡次引发争议，先是批评特朗普总统，随后又转而支持他；她还与同事发生私人恩怨，就杰弗里·爱泼斯坦档案的公开问题与总统发生冲突，并被指控在机场辱骂警员。

在本届选举周期中，她竞选南卡罗来纳州州长，但在共和党初选中仅获得令人失望的第五名。

CNN周三联系了梅斯，她提出了一项立法提案，重申了“她致力于保护妇女和与幸存者站在一起的承诺，通过推进立法来加强受害者的权利并追究性侵犯者的责任”。

玛丽贝丝·穆拉尼是当时23岁受害人的律师，她在周三的保释听证会上宣读了受害人陈述。陈述中，受害人表示她不知道当晚发生了什么，直到2024年4月才知道自己遭到性侵。

“从那以后，我的安全感、隐私感和信任感都彻底崩溃了。我总是担心被人监视、跟踪或秘密录音，”她说。

她说，她的经历，以及像2024年康奈尔大学发生的涉嫌轮奸案这样的案例，都表明要追究有权势的人和机构的责任是多么困难。

“我知道这只是这些人为他们对我所做的一切承担责任的第一步，但这是非常重要的一步。我想要的只是真相，说出真相的自由，以及能够无所畏惧地生活，”她说。

梅斯在演讲中提到的四名男子之一布莱恩·马斯格雷夫尚未被起诉。他去年接受CNN采访时否认有任何不当行为，他的律师周三发表声明称，自从梅斯“鲁莽地”指控他犯有严重的性犯罪以来，他和他的家人“遭受了难以想象的痛苦和经济损失”。

“显然，布莱恩很高兴自己没有受到刑事指控，也没有被归入其他近期被指控者的行列，但这确实在他心中留下了很深的伤痕，”律师埃里克·S·布兰德和罗纳德·L·里希特二世说道。“时至今日，梅斯女士仍然没有就她对布莱恩的虚假指控向布莱恩及其家人道歉。坦白说，她早就应该为他洗清冤屈了。”

根据法庭文件，这起袭击事件据称发生在 2018 年 10 月 26 日凌晨，地点位于南卡罗来纳州沙利文岛的一所房子里。

文件显示，受害者是一名23岁的女子，她饮酒后“醉得不省人事，跌入游泳池”，并且“无法正常行走或清晰地说话”。她“昏倒”在屋内的沙发上，在她失去意识期间，布莱恩特、奥斯本和鲍曼达成协议，由奥斯本与她发生性关系。

查尔斯顿县警长办公室

文件显示，奥斯本随后涉嫌性侵了她，尽管他“明知或理应知道受害者无法且未给予同意”。文件还显示，布莱恩特和鲍曼“观看此过程是为了激发或满足性欲”。

此外，鲍曼还面临妨碍司法公正和公布2025年3月（即梅斯发表讲话几周后）性犯罪受害者姓名的指控。

据法庭文件显示，他涉嫌于2025年3月23日将手机“恢复出厂设置”，而就在三天前，南卡罗来纳州执法部门的探员刚刚执行了搜查令，要求搜查该手机，三天后他才交出了手机。此外，文件还指出，他“明知故犯地在社交媒体平台X上发布或导致他人发布”了该机构正在调查的一名女性的姓名，该女性被指控为性犯罪的受害者。

CNN的Sarah Ferris对本报道亦有贡献。