OGDEN — The alleged student victim of a Ben Lomond High swimming coach’s advances testified Thursday to their sex life and why he first denied then minimized it.
“Because I care about her,” he said when asked why he wrote to the judge asking that the charges against Jamie Waite be dropped. “She did take care of me, and I wanted to see her again.
“I knew it was illegal, but I didn’t think we did anything wrong.”
Waite is charged with four counts of forcible sexual abuse, a second-degree felony, for illicit contact short of intercourse with the young swimmer from November 2010 through January 2011. Waite was the assistant swim coach at Ben Lomond at the time, a volunteer position.
Now 19, the young man said their affair began — he 17, she 34 — after an out-of-town swim meet in November 2010. He said they became close on the nearly five-hour bus ride home, she agreeing to buy him and a friend alcohol.
In what he described as their first liaison, and his first time drinking or having sex, she then drove the two teens to a friend’s house to party, drinking beer and vodka heavily. Later at her home a block away, he testified to joining her in her shower, then having sex on the bathroom floor, and passing out in her bed. The next morning she dropped him off at church.
During his nearly two hours on the stand, on cross-examination he said he had no recollection of Waite, so drunk she vomited that night, and denied taking advantage of her inebriation. It was the first of more than 20 sexual encounters, he said, all beginning with her picking him up at school and driving him to her place.
The prosecution is expected to finish its case this morning, followed by defense witnesses and jury deliberations expected to begin later in the day.
The alleged victim said he first denied the affair when a police detective visited his home. Waite’s close friend contacted police, and the boy’s parents went to school officials after they saw one of Waite’s suggestive comments on his Facebook page.
“I did not want to tell the truth,” he testified, regarding his lie to police. “I wanted to keep it hidden.”
He had ended the affair several months earlier.
But OPD Detective Lane Olson persisted, telling him Waite could be prosecuted without his cooperation and he could be in trouble if he continued to deny what happened. His mother was in the room, and he asked her to leave, embarrassed at what he was about to disclose, he said. He then told Olson he had sex with Waite, but only four times.
“I wanted to minimize it,” he said. “Especially since I knew he was going to tell my mom.”
“Every time we come to court the number increases,” Waite’s attorney Randy Marshall said in cross-examining the youth. “First you told the detective four times. At the preliminary hearing it was ‘more than 13 times.’ And now you say it’s over 20 times.”
“I wasn’t sure exactly before,” he answered. “And I’m a lot less nervous about it now. I’ve had time to think about it.”
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