Guilty verdict in sexual assault trial

Following four hours of deliberation Friday night, a 12-member jury convicted Bruce Allen Frey of three counts of felony sexual assault for long-term molestation of three young girls.

Frey, 59, of Whitefish, was convicted of assaulting the girls — daughters of a woman friend of his — on a regular basis from 2004 to 2006.

The girls were under 12; one was 6.

Several of the victims and their families who had gathered in the courtroom broke into tears and hugged one another as the clerk of court read each of the verdicts.

“We did it,” cried one woman as she wept into the arms of the woman next to her.

Frey sat silently in his chair through the reading of the verdicts, after which Judge Ted Lympus remanded him to the county jail on $100,000 bond while he awaits sentencing.

Sentencing is tentatively scheduled March 26.

Frey faces between four and 400 years or up to four life terms in the Montana State Prison as well as fines of up to $150,000.

On the witness stand Friday, Frey had flatly denied molesting the girls.

After three days of testimony from an array of eyewitnesses, expert witnesses, plus Frey and the alleged victims, attorneys for both the prosecution and defense referred Friday to the “dump truck” load of evidence that had been piled before the jury.

“They are leaving it to you to pull out of that pile the threads of what they believe are the evidence of this case,” defense attorney Lane Bennett said in his closing arguments Friday afternoon. “They’re throwing a bunch of stuff against the wall and hoping some of it sticks.”

Bennett referred to a number of apparent inconsistencies in the eyewitness accounts given by the alleged victims, saying that no single case of sexual abuse had been satisfactorily proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

“The state’s asking you to decide that at least one of [the victims’] hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of alleged separate events of sexual abuse, at least one, must be true.”

Deputy County Attorney Travis Ahner countered by acknowledging the trove of evidence he was asking the jury to consider, but said the prosecution in a criminal case is typically accused of presenting either too much or too little evidence.

“It’s a puzzle with a lot of different pieces. But there are puzzles [that] when you put them together you can see what they look like prior to the last piece going in,” Ahner said.

Ahner’s fellow prosecutor, Stacy Boman, said, “At the beginning of the week Mr. Ahner and I asked you, ‘What does sexual assault look like? Well, now you know.”

As Boman put it, “[Sexual abusers] are not unconscious and sleepwalking; they know what they’re doing. An accident that happens over and over and over again is not an accident.”

Bennett noted that his client allowed himself to be called to the stand, even though he was not required to testify.

“He wanted you to hear his side of the story,” Bennett said.

Frey’s questioning by Bennett earlier Friday afternoon was characterized by a series of “no” answers, as his attorney asked him repeatedly about details of several episodes during which the victims said they were abused in different ways.

Boman asked Frey about previous testimony in which he had admitted to potentially inappropriate behavior with one girl, asking him whether he had engaged in it with the other girls.

“I’m gonna say no,” Frey replied, regarding one of the girls.

In his rebuttal to Bennett’s closing statements, Ahner also pointed to a contrast between Frey’s clear memory of events that took place 10 years ago and his inability to remember many of the statements he gave to an interrogating officer shortly after his arrest.

When Boman had asked Frey why details he provided on the stand differed from those he gave immediately after his 2009 arrest, Frey answered repeatedly that he couldn’t account for what he told the officer at the time.

This is not Frey’s first brush with the law.

He burned down the Whitefish High School gymnasium in 1977. For that crime, Frey was sentenced in 1984 to 18 months in jail and 14 1/2 years of probation and was designated a persistent felony offender. He also has past convictions for theft and dealing drugs.