Second mother testifies in Farr trial

In some of the David Farr trial's most graphic testimony to date, the mother of the second alleged victim described in detail Wednesday her son's report of sexual assault.

What she told jurors allegedly happened to her son is tantamount to rape.

Prosecutors in the case spent a significant portion of that mother's testimony going over the exact words her son used to describe Farr's instances of alleged molestation. Defense attorneys spent an almost equal amount of time trying to prove those words were the product of leading questions and a small town's rumor mill.

Farr, 37, is accused of molesting five boys between the ages of 2 and 4.

The alleged victim's mother testified that she began to question her son after she noticed that the nightmares he started having a few months earlier were getting worse. There were some nights where she found him standing up in bed or kicking the wall and screaming, she told the jury.

In addition, her son began crying when it was time to go to school and became afraid of the basement, she said.

While the witness did admit there were other factors in her son's life - such as a new sibling - that could cause behavioral changes, none of them were anything more than "normal," she said.

Faced with this change in her son's demeanor, the alleged victim's mother sat him down and asked him if anybody had ever "hurt his body." Her son responded that Farr did hurt him sexually, she testified. A series of other alleged assaults, one of which was basically rape, came out over the next few months in response to more questions and some volunteered information from her son, the mother told the jury.

The alleged victim's mother also testified to a strange but uncorroborated encounter with the defendant shortly after he was suspended from his position as administrator of Children's House Montessori School in Whitefish. When she recognized Farr in a local grocery store, the defendant put down his shopping basket and walked directly out the door. The mother had not heard other mothers at the school talking about Farr's alleged assaults and did not know he had been suspended at that time, she said.

Defense attorney Phyllis Quatman countered this testimony by examining how a net of rumors may have affected the mother's ability to accurately report her son's alleged molestation.

Quatman also asked the mother how it was possible for an entire month to pass before she learned that Farr had been dismissed for alleged sexual abuse and took time to outline that mother's relationships to other mothers connected to the case.

The defense's cross-examination of this mother may be continued today.

Jurors also heard testimony Wednesday from an expert witness called by the prosecution.

Wendy Dutton, out of Phoenix, testified that it is difficult for young children to answer extremely open-ended questions, and that young children are more likely to acquiesce to a stranger asking leading questions than to their mothers asking leading questions.

She also told jurors that the intrusiveness of a sexual assault does not have any sort of relationship with a delay in the report of that abuse.

On cross-examination, Dutton admitted there is very little research on sexual assaults dealing with children younger than 3 and that the only sure way to prove a sexual assault has occurred is with corroborating, especially physical, evidence.

Farr is charged with five counts of felony sexual assault. If convicted of all five counts, he could be sentenced to life or up to 500 years in prison. He was the administrator of Children's House Montessori School from June 2004 to October 2005.

Judge Stewart Stadler, who is presiding over the trial, ruled last March that the alleged victims' mothers will be able to testify in their sons' places under a Montana Supreme Court precedent that allows hearsay evidence in cases involving very young children.

The trial, in which Farr is expected to testify, is expected to spill over into next week.

Reporter Nicholas Ledden can be reached at 758-4441 or by e-mail at nledden@dailyinterlake.com