In a stunning speech on the floor of the U.S. House last year, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-South Carolina) accused her ex-fiancé and other men of sexually abusing women — including drugging and filming them without their consent.
Mace said she, too, was a victim of these men, who all denied the allegations at the time.
On Wednesday morning, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) arrested three of the men and charged them in connection with an alleged sexual assault of a 23-year-old woman in 2018.
According to affidavits filed by SLED, John Douglas Osborne sexually assaulted a 23-year-old woman that year, while two other men — Brendan Patrick Bryant, Mace’s ex-fiancé, and Eric Bernard Bowman — watched.
Osborne, 46, is charged with first-degree assault and battery, and two counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct. Bryant, 53, is charged with voyeurism, while Bowman, 46, is charged with voyeurism, obstruction of justice and publishing the name of a victim of criminal sexual conduct.
State police officials said in a news release that Osborne, Bryant and Bowman were booked Wednesday into the Sheriff Al Cannon Detention Center in Charleston County.
The three men did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday. It is not clear whether any of them have attorneys. All of them had previously denied Mace’s allegations, which Bryant described last year as a “betrayal and lies.”
Mace declined to comment on the charges Wednesday, but her office published a news release calling attention to a bill she had introduced earlier this week that would protect survivors of sexual assault from defamation lawsuits. If passed, the legislation would force plaintiffs who lose defamation or libel cases to pay for the defendant’s legal fees.
“For too long, survivors have faced broken systems while predators exploited loopholes and walked free,” Mace said in a statement. “Every survivor deserves to be heard. Every victim deserves justice. Every predator deserves accountability. We will not stop fighting until our laws put victims first and predators behind bars.”
Mace’s House speech, delivered in February 2025, drew criticism from some members of her own party after she spent nearly an hour accusing four South Carolina men of allegedly abusing her and other women.
Standing on the House floor surrounded by other GOP women, Mace said the men engaged in “rape, nonconsensual photos, nonconsensual videos of women and underage girls, the premeditated, calculated exploitation of women and girls.” Mace said she was “going scorched earth” to “call out the cowards who think they can prey on women and get away with it.”
“When you incapacitate women, it’s against the law. When you sexually assault women, it’s called rape,” Mace said at the time. “If you film women naked, without their knowledge, without their permission and without their consent, it’s called voyeurism, and it makes you a peeping Tom, and it is illegal.”
She named Bryant, Osborne, Bowman and a fourth man who was not among those charged Wednesday.
She also accused South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson of not acting quickly enough to address her allegations. Mace lost to Wilson in the South Carolina gubernatorial GOP primary this year.
After Mace’s 2025 speech, Bryant told The Washington Post that he denied the allegations and would cooperate with any investigation. A spokeswoman for SLED confirmed at the time that the agency had been investigating Bryant since 2023.
“SLED opened an investigation regarding allegations of assault, harassment, and voyeurism on Dec. 14, 2023, after being contacted by the United States Capitol Police,” Renée Wunderlich, a spokeswoman for the agency, said in a statement last year.
“Since that date SLED has conducted multiple interviews, served multiple search warrants, and has a well-documented case file that will be available for release upon the conclusion of the case.”
In affidavits released this week, SLED alleged that the three men charged Wednesday were at a home on Sullivan’s Island, an affluent town in Charleston County, with the 23-year-old woman on Oct. 26, 2018.
The woman, who was not named, was described in the affidavits as being visibly incapacitated and “unable to walk normally or speak cogently.” She was so intoxicated, the papers say, that she fell into a swimming pool.
The woman, half-clothed, passed out on a sofa in the common area of the home, according to the documents.
Bowman and the other men “discussed sexual exploits,” authorities alleged, before agreeing that Osborne “would have sex with the Victim,” even though she “was mentally incapacitated and physically helpless due to her extreme intoxication.”
The documents allege that Bowman and Bryant watched as Osborne “did kiss, digitally penetrate and perform oral sex” on the incapacitated woman.
“She did not consent to the sexual battery or touching of her private parts or the viewing of her naked body and the viewing of the sexual acts,” a SLED captain alleged in the court papers.
Authorities allege in the records that a witness who was watching a home security video feed overheard the men and saw the assault. The witness, an unnamed woman, saw Bowman and Bryant seemingly take photos or record video of the 23-year-old woman, the affidavits state. This witness then allegedly took two photos of the video feed and wrote an “email/journal entry detailing the incident from her perspective,” the affidavits add.
In the documents, SLED also accused Bowman of obstruction of justice, alleging that he performed a factory reset on his cellphone days after authorities executed a search warrant at his home.
Victoria Craw contributed to this report.
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