Ruling allows parents to testify for children

When the child sexual abuse trial of former Children's House Montessori administrator David Farr gets under way this month, testimony from the parents will be allowed on their children's behalf.

District Judge Stewart Stadler made that ruling after reviewing testimony offered in three court sessions in December and January.

Farr is accused of sexually abusing five boys at the private Whitefish school.

Farr is being represented by Jack Quatman. Deputy County Attorneys Lori Adams and Dan Guzynski are prosecuting.

The boys were between the ages of 2 and 4 when the alleged assaults happened, raising the question of whether they are competent to testify in court. So Adams and Guzynski relied on a Montana law that allows hearsay evidence in cases involving very young children, if that evidence is found to be reliable.

In reviewing the evidence, Stadler concurred with an expert witness from Minnesota, clinical psychologist Mindy Mitnick. She found that only one of the five boys, now ages 3-5, competent to testify.

And she explained that, as with many adults, that boy may find Farr's presence and the general court setting too intimidating. In that case, he could be considered incompetent, and his mother would become the best witness to his evidence.

Stadler considered testimony in the earlier three hearings, during which the boys' mothers, counselors and doctors testified.

He found each of the adults' accounts to be consistent with one another in regard to the boy they talked with, and found each child able to remember and communicate clearly enough to report what happened.

The judge also considered findings that most children who report sexual abuse tell their mothers first, and that parents are the best means to offer evidence in court when their children cannot.

He also found that the boys' stories were not fabricated based on suggestions from adults, that the children did not socialize with the other alleged victims, and that families took care not to expose the children to further information after the alleged assaults.

Stadler will not, however, admit statements made to two law-enforcement workers. The intent in speaking to them was to gather evidence, so information the child offered could be considered not to be spontaneous.