Second trial wrapping up in rape case

A second trial for a Kalispell man accused of raping an 11-year-old girl in May 2007 continued into a third day on Wednesday, as the prosecution called witnesses to help corroborate the now 20-year-old victim’s account of the alleged assault.

The defense will get a chance to call witnesses Thursday in the sexual-assault trial of Jason Dean Franks, 46.

“We will certainly finish up testimony tomorrow,” Flathead District Judge Robert Allison said before court adjourned for the day Wednesday afternoon.

The woman testified Tuesday that her father’s roommate held her down on a bed and raped her on a Saturday when she had been left alone in a Liberty Street apartment. She said prior to the assault she had seen Franks watching pornography in the house.

“It was the most excruciating pain I had felt,” the woman testified. “It felt like getting torn.”

She said Franks told her that she should not tell anyone about the incident.

The girl did not immediately tell anyone. At 11 years old, she didn’t know what sex was and she didn’t have the words to describe the event, she said.

“I didn’t know what to say. I was too afraid to tell my dad.”

A few years later, the girl eventually told a close friend and a close friend’s father. The friend’s father encouraged the girl to tell her family.

Since she still could not bear to watch her father’s reaction, she made an audio recording around a month later and left it for him to play.

“Literally the next day we went to the station,” the woman testified.

The father testified that he was incredibly upset by the allegation.

“I was devastated. I was waylaid. I was in shock,” he said. “I felt helpless. I knew we had to go to the authorities.”

The father also said that he and Franks had gotten into a confrontation when the pair were living together about Franks making the victim’s older sister, also a minor at the time, feel uncomfortable.

The sister testified that Franks had approached her as she was asleep on the couch and told her that she was pretty and should wake up so he could show her something. The sister allegedly ignored Franks, who petted her head, and then left when she did not respond.

Absent from Tuesday’s testimony was any reference to a newspaper article that had prompted the alleged victim to come forward with her accusations.

She testified in a 2012 trial that she had seen a picture of Franks in a newspaper article after he was accused of molesting a young boy. Franks was acquitted in that case.

The Montana Supreme Court found in October 2014 that it was inappropriate for the court to include testimony about the newspaper article and the allegations from Franks’ previous case.

Franks faces up to 100 years in prison if convicted. Regardless of the outcome, he will remain a convicted sex offender and felon. Franks was convicted of sexual assault in Flathead County in 1992 and of failure to register as a sex offender in Missoula County in 2012.

Reporter Megan Strickland can be reached at 758-4459 or mstrickland@dailyinterlake.com.