Dasen case goes to jury

The jury in the prostitution case of Dick Dasen Sr. can finally talk about the enormous volume of evidence it has absorbed in the past month. The case is to go to the jury this morning.

Since the day they were selected, jurors have been under order by District Judge Stewart Stadler to not speak about the case to one another, to their families, to anyone. Finally, after a month of testimony, jurors can discuss with each other what they've heard and seen, and see if they can reach a unanimous verdict.

It's been a revelation of two subcultures, mostly invisible to the mainstream Flathead Valley community.

One was the very private life of Dasen, a 62-year-old Kalispell businessman who made a fortune and freely gave of it, bailing out friends and strangers who needed financial help and giving quietly and abundantly to causes he supported. When he helped fund Education Recovery Foundation Inc., which give young adults a chance to earn a diploma equivalency, he did it on the condition that he could remain anonymous. He helped support a Christian school and contributed to the expansion of Trinity Lutheran School.

It was important to Dasen that his good deeds stayed private, testified Ray Thompson, another businessman and

benefactor to the community. You wouldn't see a picture of Dasen in the newspaper, proudly handing over a check, Thompson said. That wasn't his style.

In a 1997 Daily Inter Lake profile on Dasen, he explained the influence he and his wife have on the community like this:

"Lots of people don't know us, and that's where we'd just as soon be."

The other subculture was also out of sight in most circles. It involved residents who lived their lives in the shadow of drug addictions, who could steal checks from their own grandmother and forge them, who would slash someone's tires over a drug deal, whose children might be taken away from them for neglect.

Those two parallel and silent worlds defied geometry when they intersected. Exposed to both for weeks now, the jury must decide on what terms that happened.

Dasen's defense is that women preyed on the ego of a wealthy man, flattering him into believing that women a third his age were sexually attracted to him and admired his prowess. He gave them money, as he gave others money, and they gave him sex because they wanted to, he asserts.

Dasen's prosecutors make the case that he exploited women, so desperately poor that $60 they didn't have made the difference whether or not their electricity would be disconnected at the end of the month. He'd give them what they needed if they gave him what he wanted, the theory goes.

In closing arguments Thursday, Dasen's attorney, George Best, and prosecuting Deputy County Attorney Lori Adams voiced those disparate viewpoints again.

Adams listed the women and the circumstances of their encounters one by one to make the case for the nine prostitution charges against Dasen.

She started with Leah Marshall. He had her get a motel room, they met, they had sexual contact, and he wrote her a check on that occasion and $42,650 worth of checks in a year, Adams said.

Adams listed variations on that same theme, enumerating the women and the money that appears on checks written on Dasen's accounts:

Kim Neise - $34,825 in four months. Two under-age girls - $4,000 in a month. Two others - $8,000 in a month. Rebecca Fowler - $9,500 in a month. Summer Marlin - $13,250 in five months. Jennifer Clark - $3,000. Tar Sermon - $10,300 in four months. Another underage girl - $12,800 in two months. Donna Duff - $29,500 in nine months. Joy Ferguson - $7,000 in three months. Crystal Benjamin - $24,000 in 11 months. Holly Rose - $21,500 in six months. Amanda Vein - $17,500 in four months. Misty Yates - $1,000 in 20 minutes.

"Is there anyone in this courtroom who would not believe the sex and the money are related?" Adams asked. Does anyone believe "the girls would have sexual conduct with the defendant if not for the money?"

Adams explained the basis of the other charges.

There is no dispute that two girls Dasen photographed in sexual acts were under the age of 18, she said. He's charged with sexual abuse of children and sexual intercourse without consent, as well as promotion and aggravated promotion of prostitution.

Despite the fact that Dasen later learned that one girl he had sex with was 16 and said he couldn't sleep with that knowledge for two nights, he had sexual contact with five underage girls after that, Adams said.

Dasen enticed women and girls into becoming prostitutes, she said.

"Ladies and gentlemen, was Kalispell a town full of prostitutes?" she asked. No, she answered herself. Women who were prostituting were doing it only for Dasen.

"He put out the carrot and the carrot was a $1,000 check" for each sexual encounter, Adams said.

While the women who testified have credibility problems, Dasen also has lied to his wife and family and to his business partners for years, Adams said.

"Is the defendant being honest with you or is he continuing his life of lies and deceit?" she asked.

Credibility was the central theme when defense attorney George Best made his closing remarks to the jury. The prosecution's witnesses have none, he said.

"All of them, every one to my recollection … told a lie somewhere," he said. The women had 14 months to concoct their stories from the time Dasen was arrested until they testified, Best said.

Some were offered immunity from prosecution for other crimes, he said. They're not to be trusted, he said.

"Those drug addicts will say anything to get drugs, to get money, to get their freedom.

"The drug world, with all its circles, collided with the culture of kindness. … When that happens, the drug world takes advantage," Best said.

"If you're dealing with the kind of women I'm talking about, kindness is a big weakness and they'll get you like they got that old fool," he said, gesturing at Dasen.

"They worked this man. They worked his money, his kindness. They shot it in their arm or up their nose," he said.

It defies logic that Dasen would leave a paper trail of checks if he was trafficking in prostitution, Best said.

"If it's prostitution, it's in the minds of those women; it's not in that man's mind."

Deputy County Attorney Dan Guzynski had the final word and it was indignant.

Best referred to the women as "those people," Guzynski said.

"Mr. Best seems to think the halls of justice are closed to people who use meth," he said. "All we've heard in three week is how terrible these people were," Guzynski said. But, he said, they were good enough for Dasen to have sex with.

The irony is cruel, he said. Some of the women had no children and were perfectly capable of working. Instead, they became reliant on Dasen's payments. Others were "the weakest, most marginal, unsophisticated, some very pathetic" people, Guzynski said.

"Mr. Dasen cripples these people and then when he comes to court, he condemns them for being crippled.

Guzynski wasn't content to blame only prostitution on Dasen, though.

"His money paid for thousands and thousands of dollars of meth in the Flathead Valley. That's why Flathead County has the meth problem it does."

Some jurors took notes through closing arguments, as they had throughout the trial. This morning, they will begin the process of deciding whether Dasen was just a man who had a lot of extramarital affairs or whether he is a criminal.