Former chamber head back on stand

As defense attorney Steve Chase ticked off the list of allegation and asked if his denials were truthful, Kazarian’s answers remained consistent.

"Yes,” he said.

"Did you ever do anything inappropriate with [her]?” Chase asked.

"No, absolutely not,” Kazarian said.

But finishing up his cross-examination, prosecutor Ivan Nightengale showed Kazarian a photo of the blond 8-year-old child and asked him if he wanted jurors to believe his story that she had called him — a 40-something man — to her airbed at night and pushed his hand toward her genitals rather than the other way around.

"Yes,” he said.

Although Kazarian and Nightengale butted heads over the transcript of taped phone calls in which the now-18-year-old girl tried getting him to admit the molestation, the exchange was calmer than it had been the previous day. On Thursday, cross-examination came to a head with his admitting being upset with Nightengale. That day’s testimony ended with Judge Joseph Scott asking Kazarian to review transcripts of phone calls with the alleged victim to ease the prosecutor’s line-by-line questioning.

Nightengale returned to questions of why Kazarian stayed on the phone for nearly two hours with his accuser without directly telling her they were blatantly false. Kazarian again said he simply went along with the conversation in hopes of learning what was driving the allegations. He was never confused during those calls unlike a later police interview with San Mateo police Detective Jen Maravillas, he said.

Kazarian also testified he never told anyone about incidents in which the girl touched his penis or tried having him touch her genitals because he was afraid Child Protective Services would take her away.

A week of testimony

Kazarian’s testimony ended the defense evidence and the molestation case which has filled a week with testimony by the defendant, the alleged victim and a slew of character witnesses called by Chase to paint him as an honest and moral man.

Kazarian is charged with 17 counts of lewd and lascivious activity with a minor under age 14 and the special allegation of continuous sexual activity. If convicted, he faces up to three decades in prison and registration as a sex offender.

But Kazarian, in both his two days of testimony and on a recorded police interview the day of his May 18 arrest, has maintained his innocence. Although Kazarian said he had suspicions of why the teen, now an 18-year-old woman instead of an 8-year-old girl, would accuse him of molestation seven years after she moved away with her mother, he said he continues to love her and only wanted to understand when she phoned him out of the blue.

He said, she said

The case against Kazarian is much of a he said, she said. The girl spent two days on the stand, as did Kazarian. No witnesses said they ever saw anything untoward between the two and the accusations weren’t made until a decade after the molestation allegedly began. An expert with the Keller Center testifying Thursday for the prosecution said that waiting years was not unusual in cases of child sexual abuse.

The girl claims a constant stream of molestation and some spankings happened when she was 8 to 10 years old, starting shortly after her arrival in 1999 until she and her mother moved out in 2002. During two days on the stand, the girls said Kazarian climbed into her bed at night as often as he could and also touched her inappropriately at his office and in a recliner chair while watching television. She said Kazarian threatened to hurt her parents if she told them about the molestation. She told her mother in February 2009 during an unrelated argument.

Kazarian remains in custody in lieu of $1 million bail. Closing arguments will happen Monday morning followed by jurors beginning deliberations.

Michelle Durand can be reached by e-mail: michelle@smdailyjournal.com or by phone: (650) 344-5200 ext. 102.