Santa Fe man convicted of assaulting boys in shower
Knee, 71, faces 30 years in prison for incident at Fort Marcy rec facility
A Santa Fe County jury on Wednesday convicted a 71-year-old man of sexually assaulting two boys in a shower stall at the Fort Marcy Recreation Complex in 2015.
After two days of testimony in his second trial in the case, Eric Knee was found guilty of two second-degree felony counts of criminal sexual contact of a minor. In his first trial last year, the judge declared a mistrial after the jury voted 7-5 in favor of conviction. Knee faces up to 30 years in prison when state District Court Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer sentences him at a later date.
Knee’s family members had filled a couple of benches inside the courtroom throughout the two-day trial, but only a few of them were present when the jurors — six women and six men — read their verdict and Santa Fe County sheriff ’s deputies took Knee into custody.
The boys, who were 11 and 12 at the time of the assault, were best friends who had gone for a swim that day, the younger boy said Wednesday. According to his testimony and an account the other boy gave Tuesday from the witness stand, Knee molested each of them separately as they were showering in a locker room stall next to the one he was using.
Knee denied the charges. During his testimony Wednesday, he said that while he was showering after his swim,
he saw the two boys showering together in the next stall, and both had erections.
Assistant District Attorney Ben Gubernick showed the jury a transcript of statements Knee made to Santa Fe police Officer Sue Brunk, one of two officers who responded to the scene in December 2015. Gubernick also played audio of the statements.
“I mean, maybe because — you know, I’m older, I’m like bigger than they’ve been, so I think that’s what happened,” Knee told the officer, according to Brunk’s recording. “They got a little excited and I didn’t do anything.”
Later, he added, “So, evidently, they were getting a little aroused from maybe just watching me. I don’t know.”
The boys told the jury a different version of the story.
The younger boy testified Wednesday that his friend had gotten into the shower first and then came out and told him that a man in an adjacent shower had touched him. He initially thought his friend was joking, the younger boy said, so he went into the shower despite the warning. There, he also encountered Knee, he said.
The boy said Knee touched his penis.
He left the shower and told his friend what happened, the boy said, and his friend left the locker room in search of the younger boy’s mother. The younger boy said he returned to the shower to wash soap out of his hair, and Knee appeared in front of him and began masturbating.
When Tony Scarborough, one of Knee’s lawyers, asked Knee if he had masturbated in front of the boy, he said he hadn’t.
“I’m 71 years old,” Knee said. “I haven’t been sexually active since I was 60.”
During closing arguments, Knee’s attorneys questioned whether the younger boy would have returned to the shower to wash off the soap if the boys had been assaulted by their client.
During Knee’s testimony, he said he had gone to the Fort Marcy Recreation Complex because the swimming pool at the Genoveva Chavez Community Center was closed that day.
Knee, who is divorced and has three children and three grandchildren, said he started swimming and hiking almost daily after being diagnosed with cancer 25 years ago. He wasn’t expected to survive the disease, he said.