Hopwood man accused of sexually assaulting multiple women
A Hopwood man faces criminal charges of sexually assaulting two women in separate incidents separated by a decade.
Robert Karwatske, 42, was arrested after police investigated a report of a domestic dispute at his home over a three-day period in March 2024.
A woman told agents from the state attorney general’s office Karwatske stopped her from leaving his home multiple times by tackling her, leaving her legs and arms bruised.
Karwatske also held a knife to her throat and applied pressure, she told police, and placed his arm around her neck from behind, the complaint said. Law enforcement viewed a video the woman took of Karwatske holding her at knifepoint, according to the affidavit of probable cause.
The woman lost consciousness multiple times during the incident, the complaint said.
Karwatske also sexually assaulted her numerous times between 2022 and 2024, including three instances where she would wake up to find Karwatske having sex with her, the complaint said.
In a separate case, a now 33-year-old woman said she had two sexual encounters with Karwatske in 2010, when she was 17, but ended contact with him after they turned violent, court documents stated.
Four years later, she re-established contact with Karwatske to retrieve a keepsake box she had given him.
Karwatske convinced the woman to have sex again, she told police. After he forcibly assaulted her, she screamed for Karwatske to stop, “which he eventually did,” according to the complaint.
“(She) was able to get her box back and never spoke to the defendant again,” the affidavit of probable cause said.
The arrest warrant was withheld from public view temporarily after the state Attorney General’s office, which is prosecuting the case, argued a delay was necessary to ensure the safety of the victims.
Karwatske is charged with involuntary deviate sexual intercourse – forcible compulsion, sexual assault and indecent assault in both cases.
In connection with the 2024 case, Karwatske is also charged with rape of an unconscious victim, strangulation, unlawful restraint, possession of an instrument of crime, simple assault and reckless endangerment.
This is not the first time Karwatske has been accused of assaulting a woman. In 2006, police alleged he used a crowbar to beat a woman he said tried to rob him. The woman had two fractured orbitals, a fractured nose and left shoulder, and needed 65 staples to close wounds to her head. At his trial, Karwatske told a jury that the woman attacked him, and he was defending himself.
In the new cases, Magisterial District Judge Jennifer Jeffries denied Karwatske bond for potential harm to the public and flight risk.
His preliminary hearing is scheduled for April 29.