A Manhattan jury deadlocked today in the molestation trial of an Upper West Side school aide, with only five out of 12 jurors believing the nine-year-old alleged victim’s account of repeated unwanted stripping and “massaging” in the boy’s room and auditorum.
Gregory Atkins, 57, remains accused of on four occasions last winter bringing the boy into a bathroom at PS 87 and telling him to undress so that he could “check for bruises.” On the final occasion, Atkins allegedly asked the boy to perform a sex act — which the boy refused, later that day telling his therapist and father.
The jury acquitted Atkins of additional child pornography charges stemming from ten images recovered from his home computer. Testimony showed the images had been downloaded and then deleted, jurors explained after their verdict that they couldn’t be sure that Atkins had personally downloaded the images.
He remains held in lieu of $250,000 bail. Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro set Feb. 15 for his next court date, during which both sides will discuss a possible retrial on the molestation counts.
The five pro-conviction jurors found the boy credible despite the troubled kid’s furious responses to a defense lawyer’s grilling on the stand last month. “Shut up!” the kid had snapped at the defense lawyer. “And stop being a bully!”
“He was provoked,” one male pro-conviction juror told reporters after the verdict. “He didn’t like authority and his buttons were pushed. But that doesn’t matter,” the juror said. “For me, it was an open and shut case.”
The boy had told consistent accounts of the molestation from the day he reported it until his time on the witness stand a year later, the juror noted.
But defense lawyers had argued that the boy’s trouble with authority extended to Atkins himself — and that the boy manufactured a molestation tale to get back at the strict school aide.
The pro-acquittal majority agreed that the boy’s emotional and authority problems, along with a lack of corroborating evidence, raised reasonable doubt as to Atkins’ guilt, said one female juror from the not-guilty camp.
“It was a very tough judgement call,” said another female, pro-acquittal juror. “There wasn’t enough evidence.”