PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - A former teacher who skipped the country after he was convicted last year of possessing child pornography has been acquitted in a separate case of groping two girls at a Portland community swimming pool.
A Multnomah County jury found Logan Storm not guilty Friday of sexual abuse in the case from 2007. He was accused of touching the girls, ages 8 and 11 at the time, when he was swimming at the shallow end of the pool, The Oregonian (https://bit.ly/OQtSwM) reported.
His lawyers argued that Storm was mistakenly identified.
Storm, 38, is serving a total of eight years in federal prison for possessing child pornography and for cutting off a monitoring anklet and fleeing to Mexico the day after he was convicted in 2013. He was recaptured weeks later. He had fled the country after he was indicted but returned voluntarily.
He taught for five years in Beaverton but resigned shortly after an investigation began. His girlfriend reported finding images on his computer of children being sexually abused.
The charges in the swimming pool case arose from a trip Storm took to a southeast Portland community center with his 9-year-old son.
The elder of the two girls testified that Storm twice touched her, and she thought the first time could have been an accident. When Storm swam around her and touched her buttocks again, she said, she yelled “Pervert” at him and got out of the water to tell her mother what had happened.
Defense attorney Michael Robert Levine told the jury the pool was crowded with 300 to 400 people, and the 6-foot-2 Storm wore goggles. “How do you identify somebody with goggles on?” he asked. “Eyewitness identification leads to mistakes.”
Police questioned Storm the day of the incident, but he wasn’t indicted until 2011. The delay wasn’t explained during the trial, nor was the jury told of the pornography case against Storm or the sentence he’s serving.
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Information from: The Oregonian, https://www.oregonlive.com
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