Friday, November 20, 2009 East Central Illinois

Judge in White case allows statement of girl in Florida

By: Mary Schenk

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Tuesday, December 18, 2007 02:08:01 PM CDT

URBANA – A Macon County jury will hear what a young girl told an interviewer in Florida about a game she played with her former teacher.

Champaign County Judge Harry Clem Monday ruled in the case of former Urbana elementary school teacher Jon White, 27, that the statement the girl gave to an interviewer about the tasting game with White met the necessary legal standard for it to be admitted at trial.

The former Thomas Paine Elementary School teacher is scheduled to be tried in Decatur beginning in late February on three counts of predatory criminal sexual assault and 13 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse for acts he is alleged to have performed with nine girls who were students at the school between August 2005 and December 2006. The girls were 7 and 8.

Because the statement was made to a third party, it is considered hearsay and therefore usually not admissible as evidence at trial. However, the law provides that such out-of-court statements to third parties may be admitted if a judge determines that the "time, content and circumstances provide sufficient safeguards of reliability."

Clem already ruled that interviews done by Department of Children and Family Services workers at the Child Advocacy Center in Urbana in the cases of the other eight girls met the standard of reliability and can be admitted at trial. The ruling on the ninth girl's statement was delayed because her interview was done at a child advocacy center in Florida, where the family had moved in the spring of 2006.

The interviewer and the girl's father had to be brought back to Urbana to testify at hearings on the reliability of the statement.

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