Farr not guilty

Jury acquits on one charge and deadlocks on four others

By NICHOLAS LEDDEN

The Daily Inter Lake

The jury in the David Farr trial returned late Thursday night with a verdict of not guilty on one count of sexual assault. They were hopelessly deadlocked on the other four charges.

After the verdict, Farr walked away from the courthouse a free man Thursday.

However, he is still subject to the terms of his release on bail pending the prosecution's decision on whether or not to retry him on the remaining four counts of sexual assault.

"We believe the verdict was justified by the state of the evidence and that the jury did a good job," said Farr's attorney, Jack Quatman.

After more than six hours of deliberation, jurors informed Judge Stewart Stadler they had reached a verdict on one count of sexual assault and were unable to reach verdicts on four counts of sexual assault.

A former administrator of Children's House Montessori School, Farr, 37, had been accused of molesting five boys between the ages of 2 and 4 in the nap room and offices there. He was the school's administrator from June 2004 to October 2005.

Farr testified in his own defense Thursday morning, vehemently denying any wrongdoing. As defense attorney Phyllis Quatman read through the litany of alleged offenses against the boys, Farr steadily dismissed each charge as untrue. His entire academic background is in education, Farr told jurors, and the school has been a big part of his life since he moved to Montana.

He works at a day care because he likes "being a part of the future" and "spending time with the children in their play, their innocence," he said.

There were complaints that he spent too much time with the children and not enough time on his duties as the school's administrator early on in his tenure, he said, but they had evaporated by May 2005.

"I considered myself ultimately responsible for the well-being of every child in that place," he said. Which is why he sometimes came out of the office to help teachers comfort especially upset children, he told jurors.

He only left the office when a child had been crying a long time or "was beyond the normal meltdown of a 2-year-old," he said.

Testimony was heard that Farr had "favorites" he used to spend more time with. When defense attorneys asked Farr about this, he replied he had no favorites, only "children that needed more attention than others."

In response to testimony that he picked up and handled these children too much, Farr said that "sometimes they would jump into my arms." He touched no child inappropriately, he said, and no child more than any other.

And he spent time on the playground because it was a good time to talk with parents as they picked up or dropped off their children, and the school board wanted him to interact more with parents, he said.

But, as school policy dictates, he never changed diapers or accompanies young children to the bathroom, he said.

Farr "virtually never" entered the nap room, where at least one alleged incident occurred, he said.

The prosecution alleges Farr "rubbed the belly" of an exceptionally upset 2-year-old while putting him down for a nap. The mother of that child also testified her son told her Farr touched him inappropriately at that time. Farr testified Thursday he was reading the child a book, and a teacher testified last week she was constantly checking in on the boy.

"If I was in that room during nap time, it was obvious how many kids were in there," he told jurors.

The nap room was only separated from the day care's main room by a 1-foot-by-2-foot bookshelf, according to testimony.

When Farr was suspended, he only knew that it was for inappropriate contact with one student, he said. He wasn't aware of the gravity of the charges and the situation until a few days before he was arrested, he said.

"I was a little confused," he told jurors.

Farr also testified to not remembering an incident where he supposedly ignored one of the alleged victim's mothers in a grocery store, and to being genuinely scared by one alleged victim's family's death threats.

On cross-examination, prosecutors asked Farr to look at the volume of evidence. Defense attorneys maintain the evidence is inconclusive.

"I would think that the first [accusation] is confusion, and the rest of them are contamination," he told Assistant County Attorney Dan Guzynski.

If they weren't suggestively asked or led, the boys would never have said such "bizarre things," Farr said.

In his closing argument, Guzynski asked jurors for a conviction on all five counts, saying that the boys' disclosures were fact and that nothing short of actual sexual abuse could explain them.

"It is inexplicable how these five kids, who are separate and apart, came to make these statements," he said.

Guzynski also asked jurors to carefully consider all of the testimony.

"At the end of the day, did [defense attorneys] really discredit any of these witnesses?" he said.

In turn, defense attorney Phyllis Quatman asked jurors to return a "not guilty" verdict, saying that Farr, in his innocence, disclosed everything.

"The changes between what these mothers said in their initial interviews and what they said in court are because there is embellishment," she said.

The mothers of the alleged victims in this case testified in their sons' places under a Montana Supreme Court ruling that allows hearsay evidence in cases involving very young children.

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