By Scott North
Herald Writer
A former Snohomish County sheriff’s deputy admitted Monday that he had sexual contact with a drunken 17-year-old girl while he was on duty in November 1999, but he insisted he didn’t rape her.
Chuck Adams, 35, said the young woman, now 18, actually initiated the sex, groping him and removing her clothing.
He also said she wasn’t the first teen-ager with whom he’d engaged in sexual activity while at his former job with the sheriff’s office.
The testimony came in the waning hours of Adams’ trial on charges of third-degree rape and first-degree custodial sexual misconduct, both felonies.
Adams, a six-year veteran of the sheriff’s office, was fired from his job after he was charged about a year ago.
The woman testified last week that Adams raped her after he took her to an isolated sheriff’s office substation at Paine Field in south Everett when she asked to use a restroom. She said she was drunk and had been earlier placed in the back of Adams’ patrol car after her equally inebriated teen-age friend had rolled their car into a ditch on Nov. 17, 1999. She said Adams’ advances were uninvited, and that she told him she didn’t want sex and to stop.
Adams said that isn’t true.
Questioned by his attorney, John Henry Browne of Seattle, Adams described how the teen had started talking about sex while in his patrol car. She later told him she wanted to "party" and touched him sexually, he said.
Adams said he went along with the sex until he thought he heard dispatchers trying to reach him on his police radio.
"I said I’ve got to go, go back to work," he testified.
The woman wasn’t happy and made sarcastic remarks about the brevity of their sexual contact, but she told him he was a "pretty cool cop" when he later dropped her off at the home of one of her friends, Adams testified.
Special deputy prosecutor Scott O’Toole hammered on Adams’ efforts to mislead others about his sexual contact with the girl. Questioned by O’Toole, Adams admitted lying to his supervisors, his former girlfriend and others.
O’Toole also got Adams to acknowledge that he’d previously had sex with an 18-year-old south Snohomish County high school student who accompanied him in his patrol car as part of a police ride-along in 1995. Adams said he met the student through a mentoring program.
Closing arguments were scheduled for this morning. Adams has agreed to have Superior Court Judge Gerald Knight decide the case without a jury.
Genetic tests have confirmed that Adams and the woman engaged in sexual contact. The key issues are whether the woman was in custody when that happened and if Adams had sex with her without consent.
You can call Herald Writer Scott North at 425-339-3431
or send e-mail to north@heraldnet.com.
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