Attorneys spar as sex abuse trial starts

By RICHARD HANNERS

Whitefish Pilot

Sharp words were exchanged between attorneys during opening statements in the David Farr trial on Monday.

Farr, 37, was arrested March 1, 2006, and charged with five counts of sexual assault. The charges involve five boys ranging in age from 2 1/2 to 4 1/2 years old who attended Montessori Children's House, in Whitefish, in 2005. Farr worked as an administrator at the school.

Jurors in the six-day jury trial will hear evidence allowed under the state's hearsay exception rule. Flathead County District Court Judge Stewart Stadler ruled that the five mothers can testify about what their boys said about Farr.

Farr was represented by Whitefish attorneys Jack and Phyllis Quatman. The state was represented by Flathead County deputy attorneys Dan Guzynski and Lori Adams.

Both sides made strenuous objections through the morning. The Quatmans protested language used in Adams' opening statement, and Guzynski objected several times during Phyllis Quatman's opening statement.

Adams appealed to the jury's "common sense" in her opening statement, saying Farr had broken the trust parents had when they sent their children to the school.

Adams noted Farr's close relationships with certain boys at the school and how some boys "disappeared" for a time when they went from the playground to the bathroom near Farr's office.

Saying Farr is an "innocent man," not just a wrongly charged man, Phyllis Quatman used "the three R's" to discredit the five mothers — recall, rumor and retrofitting.

Quatman said Adams' account of the mothers keeping careful notes after their children reported alleged abuse was not completely accurate. The mothers often jotted down notes months later, Quatman said, and perhaps the mothers were reporting their own reactions, not what the children actually said.

She also noted that rumors ran rampant "in the small town called Whitefish, Montana." Rumors were not only spread among school staff and parents but between the children themselves on the playground, she said.

When Quatman told the jury that she and her husband never talked to the children or the parents because they were "legally unavailable," Guzynski objected, saying her statement made it look like the state was blocking access to witnesses.

Quatman noted several times that she didn't think any of the mothers purposefully lied, but she suggested that the mothers may have looked for strange behavior by their boys after they heard about alleged sexual abuse at the school. She called this action by the mothers "retrofitting."

Changes in family life may have been the "stressors" that changed behavior by the young boys — not sexual assault by Farr, Quatman said. She noted that two families had babies during that time, making life at home more difficult for the children and the mothers.

One mother may have been hypersensitive because of a sexual assault incident as a child herself, one mother may have had a grudge against Farr because she had trouble getting her boy into the school when he was the administrator, and another mother told Whitefish police officer George Kimerly that she took drugs to "mellow out," Quatman said.

Quatman also noted that the pediatrician who looked at some of the boys was Dr. Kristin Veneman, who is married to Whitefish police officer Rob Veneman. Quatman claimed no physical evidence of sexual assault was ever found.

The charges have not only ruined Farr's reputation, Quatman said, but his life has been threatened several times. One mother told Whitefish police that a grandparent of one of the boys had talked about killing Farr, and officer Kimerly had reportedly told one mother he agreed with her that Farr should die, Quatman claimed.

Holding up a document she claimed she received that morning, Quatman said one mother had just informed the county attorney's office that she had thrown rocks at Farr's car, damaging it.