School arsonist accused of years of molestation

Emotions ran high in Flathead District Court on Thursday as a jury and Judge Ted Lympus heard gripping testimony in the case against Bruce Allen Frey, who is charged with three counts of felony sexual assault. 

Frey is accused of molesting three young girls — daughters of a woman friend of his — on a regular basis from 2004 to 2006. The girls were under 12; one was 6.

Frey, 59, a Whitefish native, burned down the Whitefish High School gymnasium in 1977. For that crime, Frey was sentenced in 1984 to 18 months in jail and 14 1/2 years of probation and was designated a persistent felony offender. He also has past convictions for theft and dealing drugs.

Evidence presented Thursday in the sex-abuse case left at least one juror in tears.

One alleged victim told the 12-person jury that Frey touched her inappropriately “hundreds of times.”

The woman said she met Frey when she was 10 when her mother started seeing him. She testified that the inappropriate touching started a few months later and lasted until she was 12. 

More than 10 years later, the woman said she still has nightmares. 

Her abuse ended, she said, when a teacher found a poem she wrote and it was turned over to the school counselor. 

Child Protective Services got involved, but the woman said she had younger siblings that she knew would be taken to foster care, so she and another sister who also had allegedly been abused by Frey decided not to talk about it.  

The woman said that after her poem was found, she didn’t see Frey again. However, her mother continued to see him outside the house, away from the children. 

That was until a camping trip in summer 2005, according to court testimony Thursday.

The mother left her two youngest children, a girl and a boy that were around 5 or 6 years old, with Frey at a campsite near Blankenship Bridge while she drove three older daughters to Helena for a church camp. 

The mother testified that she returned to the campsite the next day to find her young daughter “acting strangely.” She said the girl was withdrawn and very upset. 

For the trip home, when the mother tried to set the girl in the truck beside Frey, the girl started to cry and fight and would not sit next to him. 

At home, the girl wouldn’t tell her mother what happened but told one of her older sisters that Frey had touched her “over her pajamas on her private parts.” 

The mother testified that she later confronted Frey and told him to stay away from her family. “I asked him why he did it and he didn’t say anything,” she said. “He just put his head down and looked at the ground.” 

The mother’s account of the series of events 10 years ago was sometimes conflicting and she often said she didn’t remember or couldn’t recall. 

Although she received separate reports from school counselors, Child Protective Services and law enforcement prior to the camping incident, the mother did not report any abuse. She canceled two meetings with Flathead County sheriff’s detectives. 

When Deputy County Attorney Travis Ahner asked her why she hadn’t called law enforcement, the mother said that she had asked her children and let them choose whether to call the police or not. She said she told them what would happen if they called the police and the process that they would all have to go through, and the three girls decided not to tell. 

The mother denied telling the girls to keep quiet, but then said, “My memories are not as good as they should be.” 

The mother said she never saw Frey touch any of the girls inappropriately, while the victims testified that the abuse happened in their home and sometimes in the presence of other people. 

Ahner reminded the mother of an interview she gave to a Flathead County detective where she was quoted as saying, “I was not wanting to know what was going on.” But she said she didn’t recall saying that. 

Frey’s defense attorney, public defender Lane Bennett, asked the mother that if she “had witnessed any children being molested by Bruce Frey, you would have done something about it, wouldn’t you?” She replied: “I would have thought that I would.” 

Under Ahner’s further questioning, the mother broke down. 

Ahner fired questions at her, asking when one daughter came to her with a concern, “You didn’t make any phone calls, did you?” 

He continued, “And when you were made to believe that something happened between Bruce and [one of the older girls] and Bruce and [the third victim], you made no phone calls, did you?”

The mother started crying and admitted, “I didn’t want to know. I ignored it as much as I could.

“I ignored what was going on.” 

The court was then adjourned for a five-minute break so the woman could compose herself. At least one of the jurors was also crying. 

The trial resumes today.

Frey and Lympus have encountered each other in court before.

Lympus was county attorney in 1984 and prosecuted Frey for arson in the high school fire. The fire destroyed roughly one-third of Whitefish High School and necessitated a $3.2 million rebuilding project. Also destroyed were the school’s band instruments, basketball and football uniforms and equipment, sports trophies and 800 reams of paper.

Frey was not arrested until 1981 in Golden, Colorado, and a trial was not held until February 1984, seven years after the fire. 

According to a confession given to Golden police after his arrest, Frey said he first broke into school vending machines and attempted to saw into the coin box of a pay phone before making a torch out of rolled-up paper and lighting curtains on fire.

Reporter Brittany Brevik may be reached at 758-4459 or by email at bbrevik@dailyinterlake.com.