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Sexual assault trial set to begin Monday
Published October 25, 2007
SEGUIN — A Guadalupe County man who fled to Oregon last year rather than facing allegations of sexual assault of a young girl goes on trial Monday in 274th Judicial District Court.
District Attorney Vicki Pattillo, Assistant District Attorney Carrie Moy and defense attorney Lowell Kendall will choose a jury Monday morning before 274th Judicial District Judge Gary Steel in the trial of John Clarence Farris.
Farris, 53, faces aggravated sexual assault charges for alleged assaults of a young girl in Guadalupe and Wilson counties.
In addition, he is charged with bail jumping for leaving the state rather than going to trial in 2006.
If convicted for aggravated sexual assault of a child, Farris could get between five and 99 years in state prison and a fine of up to $10,000.
Bail jumping is a third-degree felony punishable by two to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.
His bail, originally $25,000, was raised to $1 million by an Oregon magistrate.
In Texas, it was reduced to $400,000, and Farris has been held in Guadalupe County Jail since the U.S. Marshals Service returned him to Texas about a year ago after capturing him while he was talking on a pay phone in Medford, Ore.
When he was arrested, federal authorities say Farris had been living in a homeless camp near Medford.
Farris was indicted by a Guadalupe County grand jury in May 2005, on five counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child and on one count of sexual assault of a child.
A sexual assault of a child allegation, normally a second-degree felony punishable by two to 20 years in state prison, is considered aggravated if the child, by legal definition a boy or girl less than 17 years old, is under 14 years old, making the case a first-degree felony and bringing into play a possible life sentence.
The grand jury indictment said the alleged sexual assaults are from incidents in 1989, 1992 and 1997 and reportedly all involved the same girl.
A Wilson County grand jury indicted Farris on four counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child in September 2005.
The Wilson County grand jury indictment said the alleged sexual assaults occurred in 1995 and 1996.
When Farris jumped bail, local authorities continued their search for him and Pattillo’s office continued its preparations for his eventual trial.
“I cannot comment on the specifics of a pending case, but I can assure the public, as always, my office will aggressively pursue cases that involve violence against children,” Pattillo said.
This trial will be the fourth felony sexual assault case to come to trial in Guadalupe County in 2007, and a number of others have been settled before trial in plea agreements that resulted in prison terms.
In April, Aron Dale Brown was sentenced to 99 years in state prison for sexual assaults committed against two young girls — and upon the rendering of the verdict, the district attorney’s office asked the judge to “stack” the sentences.
In February, Chad Allen Arehart got 45 years for violating terms of his probation on a sexual assault of a child conviction. Also in February, James Kenneth Williamson got 50 years for the sexual assault of a 43-year-old San Marcos woman.
Pattillo said her office, which last year filed 1,273 felony cases in Guadalupe County — 262 of them involving motions to revoke probation like Arehart’s — regards any felony as a serious matter to be investigated and prosecuted. But the ones involving children or victims of violent crimes such as sexual assault are perhaps the most important of all.
“A priority of this office is to protect the most vulnerable in our society, and no one is more vulnerable than a child,” Pattillo said. “Whether it involves sexual abuse, physical abuse, neglect or endangering a child’s precious life, this office takes these cases very, very seriously.”
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