EVERETT — The former principal of Highland Christian Schools remains adamant that he didn’t have sex with a teenage student.
Snohomish County prosecutors are convinced Mark Evan Brown did rape a 14-year-old girl in 2008 after he encouraged her to run away from home and helped her hide out at the private Arlington school.
A judge on Monday said without a trial, there is no way to know what happened.
Superior Court Judge Ronald Castleberry, however, said he believes there are enough red flags in Brown’s past to warrant a sexual deviancy evaluation.
Castleberry sentenced Brown, 38, on Monday to a year in jail. The judge will allow Brown to serve his time on work-release.
Brown pleaded guilty in September to second-degree kidnapping of a minor. Prosecutors dropped a third-degree child rape charge as part of a plea agreement reached with the Arlington father. Brown must register as a kidnapper for 15 years. He also was ordered not to have any contact with minors unless he receives approval from his community corrections officer.
“Simply because I have a stack of 50 letters from people saying he’d never do this … just belies reality,” Castleberry said. “It happens. Sex offenders don’t wear a big ‘S.O.’ on their foreheads and say ‘I’m a sex offender.’ ”
Castleberry also was clear that Brown had not been convicted of a sex crime and couldn’t be sentenced as a sex offender.
Brown has adamantly denied raping the girl. He asserted the allegations were based on lies and the charge arose from a bad police investigation.
“I would never plea to something I didn’t do,” Brown told The Herald in September. “I was there for about 10 minutes. By law what I should have done was call 911 or called her parents. I had a responsibility to report.”
Brown said he was called to the school that night by another teacher who reported students had broken in and were staying at the school. He said he mishandled the incident, and in the process put the welfare of one of the students above his own family.
Snohomish County deputy prosecutor Halley Hupp said Brown did more than fail to alert the girl’s parents that she was at the school.
“After years of inappropriate behavior with minors, the defendant was finally caught between a rock and a hard place and rather than risk potentially worse sanctions at trial he accepted a plea to kidnapping in the second-degree of a minor,” Hupp wrote in a sentencing memorandum to the judge.
Hupp on Monday read about a dozen text messages Brown exchanged with the girl before she left home. Detectives found more than 600 text messages between Brown and the student, court papers said.
“The defendant was the victim’s principal. He encouraged and induced her to leave her home. He misused his position,” Hupp said.
Hupp also pointed to a pre-sentence evaluation. A State Department of Corrections official found that Brown “blurs appropriate boundaries in his interactions with minors.”
“While evidence may be insufficient to support the findings in the current case, I believe sufficient data exists to conclude that, in the past Mr. Brown has actively conspired to create relationships with minors to enable him to act in accordance with his illicit desires,” wrote Christopher Glans, a community corrections officer.
Two witnesses would have testified that Brown, as an adult, had sexual intercourse with them when they were 14 and 15, Hupp said.
Brown was fired July 24, 2008, from his job at Highland, formerly known at Master’s Touch Christian School.
He came to the private Christian school after he lost his previous job as a wrestling coach at Concrete High School in Skagit County. He was investigated there after reports of an inappropriate relationship with a female student.
That student denied she had any sexual contact with Brown. She told Skagit County investigators they exchanged text messages and went to dinner together, and Brown occasionally gave her a ride home. No charges were filed.
Hupp said Brown hasn’t accepted responsibility for his actions at Highland.
Everett defense attorney Karen Halverson disagreed. She said some of the text messages were taken out of context and many of the allegations against her client would have been disproved at trial.
“I have accepted full responsibility,” Brown said Monday.
Castleberry wasn’t convinced.
He reminded Brown that by pleading guilty to kidnapping he admitted that he abducted, restrained or kept the girl from her parents. The content and tone of the text messages show that Brown was actively involved in the girl’s disappearance from home, the judge said.
“All you have to do is read the text messages to know it was more than 11 minutes,” Castleberry said. “You encouraged a minor to run away from home. To suggest anything else is a lie.”
Diana Hefley: 425-339-3463; hefley@heraldnet.com.
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