An exchange student testifies in the trial of James McClintock of Junction City on misdemeanor charges
By Jack Moran |The Register-Guard
>Appeared in print: Saturday, May 22, 2010, page B1
A Lane County jury concluded Friday that a Junction City man sexually abused a female foreign exchange student who lived with his family last fall.
After about four hours of deliberations, the three-man, three-woman jury unanimously found James Franklin McClintock, 51, guilty of four misdemeanor counts of third-degree sexual abuse and one misdemeanor count of private indecency for illegal sexual contact with the 17-year-old girl from Europe.
Those charges stemmed from the girl’s claims that McClintock touched her inappropriately on four separate occasions, and exposed himself to her once.
McClintock was found not guilty of a fifth count of third-degree sexual abuse, as the jury did not find sufficient evidence to conclude that he forced the girl to touch him after he exposed himself to her.
McClintock was arrested in February after an investigation into the allegations. He will be sentenced Wednesday. He faces one year in jail on each of the charges.
McClintock, a contractor who has served as a volunteer assistant coach for the Junction City High School football team, took the witness stand Thursday in the third day of his trial and strongly denied charges that he abused the girl in a garage on his property where he set up a workout area that the teen used under his supervision.
He did admit asking the girl if she’d had sex before, but claimed to have done so only out of concern for her well-being.
Earlier in the trial, the victim testified that she didn’t resist McClintock’s advances because she “was afraid of what would happen if I tell (him) no.”
In January, the girl told a Junction City High School teacher about being sexually abused at McClintock’s home.
The teacher reported it to authorities, and the girl was moved to another home.
“It was weighing on her,” Lane County deputy district attorney Erik Hasselman told the jury Thursday during his closing argument. “She thought she needed to tell somebody. She has, and it’s being dealt with.”
McClintock was arrested a few days later, and spent about a month in the Lane County Jail before he was released on bail.
He remains on house arrest and will wear an electronic monitoring bracelet around his ankle until he returns to court for sentencing.
Hasselman and McClintock’s attorney, Shaun McCrea, both declined to comment Friday on the jury’s verdict.
Foreign student exchange 