Defense casts doubt in ex-teacher’s molestation case
Man accused of inappropriately touching students at Santo Niño Regional Catholic School
A defense attorney told a jury Tuesday “it’s a difficult time in our country” when it comes to finding people who can be fair to a Catholic schoolteacher charged with molesting three of his students.
“It’s a very specific time in our country and in our courts,” attorney John Samore said during his opening statement in the teacher’s trial, a time when “it’s not so easy to determine who is telling the truth.”
Aaron Dean Chavez, 50, a former art teacher at Santo Niño Regional Catholic School in Santa Fe, is accused of criminal contact with students from 2007-16.
The defense lawyer told jurors he wasn’t sure what Chavez’s accusers will say on the witness stand during the scheduled weeklong trial — because, Samore said, they have changed their stories through the course of the case.
One thing he’s sure the evidence will show, Samore said, was “how vulnerable children are to being influenced.”
Police arrested Chavez in January 2016 on suspicion of criminal sexual contact with a minor after a 6-year-old told her parents that Chavez had insisted on tucking her shirt into her pants during one of his classes and in doing so had touched her genital area.
Soon after, four other accusers, including an 8-year-old and two teenagers, came forward to report that Chavez had inappropriately touched their buttocks.
The teenagers told investigators they realized that Chavez had inappropriately touched them only after a fifth-grade teacher led a class on “good touch, bad touch,” according to a deputy’s affidavit for an arrest warrant.
The mother of one of teens said the Archdiocese of Santa Fe conducted an investigation and officials told the mother the claims were unsubstantiated, the document says. The mother reported the case to state police, but no criminal charges were filed against Chavez, the affidavit says.
Authorities subsequently charged Chavez with five counts of criminal sexual penetration, but that indictment was later amended and he is standing trial on three counts, one from 2007, one from 2012 and one from 2016.
Chavez admitted that he tucked in the girl’s shirt and inappropriately touched her buttocks, but not her genital area, according to a deputy’s arrest warrant from 2016. He also said he did it quickly and knew it was wrong, the statement says.
Chavez has since vehemently denied, through his lawyer, having done anything wrong.
Assistant District Attorney Julie Gallardo asked jurors to let their common sense guide them in deciding the case.
“This is a simple case,” she said. “The defense will try to distract you with things that don’t matter. The girls didn’t know each other. … They didn’t talk to each other about what happened. Their parents didn’t talk to each other. It doesn’t matter if the contact was quick or wasn’t meant to be sexual. [Chavez] was their teacher. They were children and he touched them where he wasn’t supposed to touch them.”
Gallardo said the three students Chavez is accused of molesting will testify.
Samore told jurors he’ll present witnesses who will talk about the nature of memories and “false reporting” and the “level of hysteria” that developed surrounding the accusations in the small private elementary school.
If convicted on all three counts — a second-degree felony charging sexual contact of a minor (unclothed) and two third-degree felony counts of sexual contact of a minor (clothed) — he would face a maximum potential sentence of 27 years in prison.