First it was sex on the square and then it was sex on the electric box.
The Villages was reeling in 2014 when two different couples were caught having sex in very public places.
The first incident happened in June when Villager Margaret “Peggy” Klemm, 68, and David Alan Bobilya, 49, were arrested after a Sumter County sheriff’s deputy caught them having sex at Lake Sumter Landing Market Square. Villagers were shocked at the news and many residents were happy to see them each get 180 days behind bars.
Many residents were upset because The Villages was getting a black eye over the event in national news. The community was still reeling from rumors of rampant STDs that started in 2006 when a gynecologist said she’d treated more cases of herpes and human papillomavirus at The Villages than she did when she practiced in Miami. So residents were hoping things would quiet down and they’d stop receiving phone calls for their concerned children and friends in other parts of the country who wanted to make jokes about the perception of unbridled sex in the community.
But on Oct. 1, the unthinkable happened. Two Villagers were arrested by a Sumter County sheriff’s deputy for engaging in sexual activity on an electrical utility box just off the roundabout at Morse Boulevard and El Camino Real.
Back came the phone calls from upset children. News outlets grabbed onto the story and were all too happy to bring up the earlier sex-on-the-square incident and the age-old STD rumors resurfaced. And Villagers’ phone lines were burning up as family and friends fired up the sex jokes one more time.
In the October incident, Charm Ann Gilbert, 40, of the Village of Tierra Del Sol, and James Richard Adams, 47, of the Village of Orange Blossom Gardens, were arrested after a deputy found them naked and fully engaged in sex on the utility box.
The deputy had been called to the scene at 8:42 a.m. after being alerted by a worker in the area.
According to the arrest affidavits, Gilbert’s shirt was pulled up over her breasts and her shorts and underwear were off, while Adams sexual organ was fully exposed and he was standing in front of her.
After being ordered by the deputy to get dressed, Adams said he and Gilbert had been having sex at the location “due to them not having any other place to go,” the arrest report said, while also noting that they had been in full view of the public.
Gilbert and Adams initially were held at the Sumter County Detention Center on $1,500 bond apiece. But in their first appearance in Sumter County Court, the couple was ordered held without bond and faced charges of exposure of sexual organs and disturbing the peace.
The following month, both Gilbert and Adams pleaded no contest in front of Judge Thomas D. Skidmore in Sumter County Court. They each were ordered to serve six months in jail and received credit for time served since their Oct. 1 arrests. And each had to pay $1,114.91 in court costs and would be assessed $50 per day for their jail stay.
The sex on the electric box incident wasn’t the first time Gilbert had found herself in trouble with the law in The Villages. On July 30, 2014, she and another man were involved in an early morning “beer run” that resulted in their arrests. The pair had stolen a case of beer from Circle K North at 3 La Grande Blvd. in The Villages and fled in a golf cart. They were later arrested by Lady Lake police at a home on Dustin Drive on the Historic Side of The Villages.
On Aug. 22 in Lake County Court, Judge Donna Miller sentenced Gilbert to probation in that case. At time of her sex-on-the-electric-box arrest, she still owed $1,067.50 in fines and fees in that case, court records showed.
