Three Men Charged in 2018 South Carolina Assault Case Raised by Nancy Mace
South Carolina state agents have charged three Charleston County men with sexual offenses tied to an alleged 2018 assault first described publicly by U.S. Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina.
The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) identified the men as Patrick Bryant, 53, Eric Bernard Bowman, 46, and John Douglas Osborne, 46. All three were booked into the Sheriff Al Cannon facility after the charges, according to the agency. South Carolina Law Enforcement Division
Bryant is the former fiance of Mace. His two co-defendants were his business associates. The three have been described in local coverage as prominent Lowcountry businessmen. SLED announced the arrests on Wednesday morning. ABC News 4
The allegations center on an incident in October 2018 at a home in Sullivan's Island, South Carolina. Prosecutors allege Osborne committed sex acts on a 23-year-old incapacitated and intoxicated woman while Bryant and Bowman watched. Mace and Bryant were not yet engaged at that time. The Guardian
Bryant and Bowman are each charged with voyeurism, which in this context means watching without consent for sexual purposes. Osborne is charged with first-degree assault and battery and two counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct.
State agents allege the men discussed beforehand who would assault the woman. Investigators say the men took photos and recorded the assault. The assault was also visible on the home's security system feed.
A woman watching that feed saw the assault, took pictures, and wrote about it in a journal, according to the allegations. That account is now part of the evidentiary record cited in support of the charges.
Bowman faces two additional charges. He is charged with obstruction of justice for allegedly performing a factory reset on a phone sought by investigators under a search warrant, essentially wiping data investigators wanted to examine. He is separately charged for publishing a victim's name after allegedly posting the victim's name and a video of her on X.
The case reached national attention in February 2025, when Mace described the assault at length in a nearly hourlong House floor speech in which she named the men. Bryant denied the allegations that month, telling the Associated Press he would cooperate to clear his name.
The broader context here is the unusual path this case took to a courtroom. A sitting member of Congress used floor privilege to publicly identify alleged perpetrators and detail alleged conduct more than six years after the incident, and state investigators have now brought charges that will test contemporaneous electronic evidence, witness documentation, and allegations of later obstruction.
Looking at what this means for the process ahead, the prosecution moves the dispute from public allegation to criminal adjudication. The charges establish what the state contends it can prove. Conviction or acquittal will turn on standards and procedures inside a South Carolina courtroom, not on the prior public debate.
