No prison time for pastor
Sexual-abuse case involving 13-year-old girl divided congregation
A teenage girl Friday faced the youth pastor who sexually abused her and she told a packed Arapahoe County courtroom how she was considering suicide when the pastor violated her trust and crushed her spirit.
“He never punched me and he never hit me,” the girl said. “But he broke me. As a person I trusted, he shattered what safety was.”
After an hour-long court hearing that featured emotional testimony, fireworks between a judge and prosecutors over sentencing, and a courtroom packed with church members split over the case, Christopher Hutchinson, 37, was sentenced to 20 years of probation as a sex offender. He also received a 90day jail sentence and was ordered to register as a sex offender by Arapahoe County District Court Judge Natalie Chase.
A jury found Hutchinson guilty in July of one count of sexual assault on a child by a person of in a position of trust and one count of sexual assault on a child. Hutchinson had met his victim while serving as youth pastor at South Fellowship Church in Littleton and was serving as youth pastor at Southeast Christian Church in Parker when he was arrested for the crime.
The girl, whose identity is being withheld by The Denver Post because she was the victim of a sex crime, had sought Hutchinson’s counsel after a spring break trip where a fight with her mother led to deepening depression. Hutchinson had been the youth pastor at her Littleton church and had worked with her older siblings. Even though he had moved to another church, Hutchinson had maintained a relationship with the girl and other teens from Littleton.
The two met on at least three occasions at parks, and Hutchinson sexually touched the girl by reaching under her sweatshirt and touching her bra, holding her between his legs to gaze at stars and finally by “snuggling with her for 10 minutes” and rolling on top of her and pressing his genitals into her hip, according to court testimony and an arrest affidavit.
After the third encounter, the girl told her parents, who called police.
The teen girl’s father, who was a church elder who oversaw the youth ministry, asked for prison time for the man, who once had been a close family friend. The entire family has suffered isolation and depression and loss friends because of the assault, he said.
“How do I wrap my mind around Chris Hutchinson, a trusted friend who sexually assaulted my 13-yearold daughter?” the father said. “We have been hurt so severely by someone we held so closely.”
The father also addressed the 48 church members who wrote letters in support of Hutchinson, and the dozens who sat behind him in support in court.
“It’s not their daughter who was assaulted,” the father said. “They need to get over their denial and come to grips with what this man did and what he could have done to one of their daughters.”
When it was Hutchinson’s turn to speak, he and his attorney said he had been struggling with difficult situations as a youth pastor, including the fatal shooting of a student at Arapahoe High School and multiple teen suicides.
“I want to apologize for my actions,” Hutchinson said. “They are unacceptable. They are completely out of bounds with the job I had
as youth pastor and as the role I had as a human being.”
Leora Joseph, managing chief district attorney in the 18th Judicial District, had asked the judge to sentence Hutchinson to four years in the Colorado Department of Corrections, saying he deserved a more severe penalty because he had lied about getting sexual gratification from touching the girl and tried to destroy her character with a harsh cross-examination.
The former youth pastor had shown signs that he was grooming the girl for an eventual sexual encounter by text messaging her late at night and escalating the touching each time he saw her, Joseph said.
“There is no bigger betrayal of trust than a man who purports to walk with the Lord,” Joseph said.
However, Chase, the judge, questioned the district attorney’s office for pushing for prison time.
Before the trial, the prosecutors, who work for District Attorney George Brauchler, had offered a plea agreement that would have led Hutchinson to be convicted of a misdemeanor with the potential to take his name off sex offender registries.
“It’s going from one end to the other end. I mean complete opposite,” Chase said. “I’ve never seen it. It’s totally inconsistent and it doesn’t make sense.”
The judge accused the DA’s office of trying to punish Hutchinson for exercising his right to a jury trial.
However, Joseph and Brauchler argued that was not the situation. They offer plea deals with lesser sentences in an attempt to get criminals to admit wrongdoing and take first steps toward rehabilitation. And, in child sexual assault cases, they prefer to work out plea agreements to spare children the pain of facing their attackers and talking about uncomfortable sexual activity in front of an audience, Joseph said.
During the trial, Hutchinson testified that he only snuggled and touched the girl for emotional gratification, Joseph said. He only admitted he found sexual gratification after a jury convicted him and he was facing prison time. She also said Hutchinson further traumatized the girl by trying to cast blame on her during the trial.
“He took the stand and he had zero respect for this child. He threw her under the bus,” Joseph said. “It was one of the most brutal character assassinations of a child I’ve ever seen.”
Still, Chase said a prison sentence would be too much because it would ultimately be up to a parole board to decide when Hutchinson could be released even if she recommended four years behind bars. In Colorado, felony sex crimes carry indeterminate sentences, meaning a person could spend the rest of his life in prison if a parole board decided he had not been rehabilitated.
Hutchinson only touched the child through her clothes, and Chase said she had never heard of a prison sentence for a sexual assault that did not involve touching genitals or rape.