Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, December 14, 1993 TAG: 9312140200
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PEARISBURG LENGTH: Medium
Timothy W. Myers, 28, of Ripplemead, pleaded not guilty to a charge of aggravated sexual battery. Myers was indicted by a grand jury earlier this year on three charges of aggravated sexual battery and one charge of forcible sodomy.
This was the first case to go to trial. Trial dates have not yet been set for the remaining charges that involve two other boys.
Myers told the jury he did not fondle the 12-year-old boy in June 1992 when the boy stayed overnight with him. Instead, he blamed the boy's accusation on a confrontation they had one month later when Myers physically restrained him and removed him from the town pool after the boy struck Myers.
But the boy, now 14, testified that he awoke to find Myers touching his penis. Alarmed, the boy said he rolled away onto his stomach and the fondling stopped. The boy said he waited eight months to report the incident because he was afraid.
Instead, he steered clear of Myers - who had been his Scoutmaster, soccer and basketball coach and swimming instructor - or made sure he wasn't alone with him.
Myers testified he believed the boy misunderstood some horseplay he witnessed between Myers and another boy at the pool. Testimony indicated that the boy exploded at Myers, telling him to leave the boy alone and not to touch him.
James Hartley, Giles County's commonwealth's attorney, had asked the jury to convict Myers and sentence him to 10 years in prison. The maximum punishment he could have received was 20 years.
Hartley said the boy's reaction to Myers in the swimming pool incident one month after the alleged fondling was a typical response.
"He could not stand to see [Myers] touching another boy. And he lost his cool and he let him have it," Hartley told the jury in closing arguments.
Hartley said the boy would have nothing to gain by making up a story that would subject him to the public scrutiny of Monday's trial.
But John Quigley, Myers' attorney, suggested that the boy was fulfilling his statement to Myers that he would get him for throwing him out of the pool in July.
"He's done exactly what he set out to do: get even," Quigley said.
The jury deliberated just over an hour before acquitting Myers.
Two jurors told reporters after the trial that there was not enough evidence to convict Myers and that they didn't believe the case should have been brought to trial.
"I just feel like what we had to go on was not enough evidence to put him in prison," Cynthia McGuire said. "What made it tough was we really feel sorry for the child."
McGuire said jurors were not aware of the other charges pending against Myers.
Myers, a first-year teacher at Eastern Elementary School, resigned in April. Myers also was a basketball and soccer coach, assistant recreation director for the town of Pearisburg and Scoutmaster for Pearisburg's Boy Scout Troop 34.
He was removed from his position as assistant recreation director for the town of Pearisburg shortly after his arrest in February. And the district Boy Scout office in Charleston, W.Va., also removed Myers from his Scoutmaster post.
by CNB