South Carolina authorities charged Rep. Nancy Mace’s ex-fiancé and two associates in a 2018 sex assault case she laid out on the House floor, after years of alleged silence and delay for the victim.
AP News reported that John Douglas Osborne, Patrick Bryant, and Eric Bernard Bowman now face criminal charges tied to an alleged October 2018 assault of a 23-year-old woman at a home on Sullivan’s Island, an affluent suburb of Charleston, South Carolina.
State Law Enforcement Division agents brought the case. Osborne, 46, is charged with first-degree assault and battery and two counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct. Bryant, 53, Mace’s former fiancé, and Bowman, 46, each face a voyeurism charge. Bowman also faces obstruction of justice and a count for publishing the name of a victim of criminal sexual conduct.
The charges track the core of what Mace described in a nearly hour-long House floor speech in February 2025, when she named the men and said she had found photos and videos on Bryant’s phone while the couple was still together.
Daily Mail reporting on the agents’ sworn statements lays out a grim sequence. The woman had fallen into a pool, then passed out on a couch while covering herself with a pillow. She was intoxicated and incapacitated.
Agents said the men talked beforehand about who would assault her. Osborne then committed sex acts on her while Bryant and Bowman watched. The men took photos and recorded the assault. The scene also appeared on a home security feed.
Another woman who happened to be watching that feed saw the assault, took pictures, and wrote about it in a journal, according to the agents’ account.
Just the News reported the same core allegations from the affidavits: an agreement to assault an unconscious victim, photographs of the crime, and supporting evidence from security footage and a witness.
Bowman’s case goes beyond watching. Agents said he factory-reset a cellphone he knew investigators were seeking under a search warrant, conduct that produced an obstruction charge.
He is also charged with publishing the name of a victim of criminal sexual conduct. Authorities say he posted the victim’s name and a video of her on X.
That is the kind of secondary abuse survivors often face after the original crime: exposure, digital trail, and a system that can move slowly while evidence disappears.
Mace and Bryant were not yet engaged at the time of the October 2018 incident. Their engagement came later and was later called off. In February 2025, Mace went to the House floor and spoke at length about what she said she had found.
In that speech, she said she had
"accidentally uncovered some of the most heinous crimes against women imaginable. We're talking about rape, non-consensual photos, non-consensual videos of women and underage girls, and the premeditated, calculated exploitation of women and girls in my district."
The New York Post reported that after those public accusations, Bryant sued her for defamation. At the time of her allegations, Bryant told the Associated Press he denied the claims and would fight them in the proper channels.
Bryant said:
"I take this matter seriously and will cooperate fully with any necessary legal processes to clear my name."
Charges have now been filed anyway. SLED has not said whether any investigation into the men is continuing beyond the counts already brought.
Mace’s communications director told the Daily Mail she is barred from further comment by a court order in an ongoing civil case. Even so, after the arrests she released a statement tying the case to her legislative work.
Mace said:
"Protecting women and holding predators accountable isn't a slogan. It's been one of my top priorities in Congress. For too long, survivors have faced broken systems while predators exploited loopholes and walked free."
She has cited 25 bills she says are aimed at protecting victims of sexual assault, harassment, or discrimination, including measures related to retaliatory defamation and libel suits. She also advanced a proposal that would require anyone who brings such a case and loses to pay the other side’s attorney fees.
Breitbart noted her broader public line after the speech: stand with women, children, and survivors, and keep pressure on until predators face consequences. The outlet also reported the alleged assault date as Oct. 26, 2018, matching the Sullivan’s Island timeline in the charging narrative.
The alleged assault dates to 2018. Mace’s floor speech came in February 2025. The criminal charges arrived after that speech, following public naming of the men, descriptions of recordings, and a witness account tied to a security feed.
Osborne faces the most serious sexual-conduct counts. Bryant and Bowman are charged as watchers and recorders under the voyeurism statute. Bowman’s separate counts over a wiped phone and a named victim on social media show how the alleged cover-up and exposure can stack on top of the original crime.
Mace, a South Carolina Republican leaving the House this term after a failed gubernatorial bid, has been one of the loudest voices in Congress pushing for release of the Epstein files and for tougher treatment of predators who film and traffic in non-consensual images. This case is local, not Epstein. But the pattern she described is the same one voters keep hearing: recorded abuse, slow institutions, and survivors left waiting while evidence sits on phones and hard drives.
When women are assaulted while unconscious, filmed for trophies, and named online, the bare minimum is charges with real teeth, and a system that does not make survivors wait years for the truth to catch up.
