A 22-year-old man who has a long history of drug possession, theft and assault, was charged on Friday in Ramsey County District Court with sexually assaulting a young woman with Down syndrome.

The charges said Herbert Lee House III of St. Paul made the victim perform oral sex on a Metro Transit bus. He is charged with third-degree and fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct.

According to the criminal complaint, a 16-year-old boy and his 17-year-old friend witnessed the sex act and called police when they got home. Both boys told an investigator that a vulnerable woman who appeared to have Down syndrome got on the bus with other vulnerable adults and their personal care assistant about 10:30 a.m. Tuesday.

The alleged victim sat next to a man later identified as House. The teens saw them switch places, then saw the woman's head "bobbing up and down in the man's lap," the complaint said.

The 16-year-old said the woman appeared to be crying after she got off the bus with House and then got back on when her care assistant saw her.

After House was arrested on Thursday, he admitted that he sat next to the woman and that she appeared to be vulnerable. He said she touched and hugged him, but he denied there was oral sex, the complaint said.

House has several other charges of theft and fifth-degree assault pending. On Feb. 7, he was charged with the unwanted touching of a woman at a bus stop at 6th and Minnesota streets in St. Paul. He also pleaded guilty and was given a yearlong stayed sentence for slapping a teenage girl across the face on another Metro Transit bus in October.

House is being held in the county jail in lieu of $60,000 bail.

PAT PHEIFER