After an emotional three-and-a-half day trial, members of a jury were unable to come to a verdict Friday in the case against a Whidbey Island counselor accused of committing sex crimes against three female clients.

Glenn Jolley, 58, is facing charges of second-degree rape, indecent liberties and attempted indecent liberties.

The trial in Island County Superior Court started Tuesday with a lengthy jury selection process. Testimony started Wednesday morning and wrapped up Friday morning with closing arguments.

The jurors will return to court Monday morning to continue deliberations.

Jolley is accused of raping a 15-year-old girl in 1995, attemping to sexually fondle another patient in 1999 and fondling a third client’s breast early this year.

Jolley took the stand to defend himself and coolly denied the accusations. He described himself as a dedicated counselor who went above and beyond the call of duty to help his emotionally troubled patients. He testified that he didn’t do anything inappropriate to the clients beyond putting a hand on a shoulder or patting a back.

Jolley’s attorney, Mark Mestek of Everett, was aggressive in trying to discredit each of the alleged victims and punching holes in their stories. He flustered each of the witnesses with questions about the details of their stories.

“He will tell you he did not touch any of them sexually, he did not touch any of them inappropriately and he did not rape Miss Donovan,” Mestek said in opening statements.

Emotions ran high on the prosecution’s side. All three of the alleged victims wept on the stand and one of the women got into a bitter altercation with the defense attorney. The judge reprimanded the prosecuting attorney for his angry outburst accusing Mestek of harassing a witness.

One by one, the alleged victims told their tearful stories from the stand. Island County Deputy Prosecutor Mike Henegen made a point of having the women tell the jury that they don’t know each other and weren’t in counseling with Jolley at the same time.

“All three had problems, all three were vulnerable and all three were taken advantage of by Mr. Jolley,” Henegen said.

Kimberly Porter, an Oak Harbor resident, testified that she went to a counseling session with Jolley in the late afternoon of Jan. 16, 2001. Porter claims that Jolley hugged her under her coat when she first came in, brushing his hand against the sides of her breasts. She says she stepped back in shock, so he hugged her again outside the coat, moving his hands down toward her buttocks.

Porter testified that Jolley sat down beside her while they were talking, started rubbing her back and then fondled her breast. He gave her a ride home and came into her house — she claims he was uninvited. She said that she asked him to leave and he resisted, but eventually left.

“I was shocked because I trusted him,” Porter said.

In the cross examination, Mestek pointed out a major inconsistency in her written statement to the police. The jumbled statement, which she wrote within an hour or two after Jolley left, doesn’t mention the exact incident of breast-touching that she later related to police and which became the foundation of the indecent liberties charge.

Mestek also hit on Porter’s drinking problem and her criminal history, which included a conviction for assaulting a police officer.

Melissa Donovan, who now lives in another state under a married name, was a 15-year-old patient of Jolley’s in September of 1994. On the night he allegedly raped her, Donovan and her family were at counseling at the county clinic in Coupeville. Jolley happened to show up and agreed to drive Donovan home.

Donovan testified that Jolley started rubbing her back and then fondled her breasts while they were driving to North Whidbey in the minivan. She said that Jolley drove past the road to her home and took her to an isolated area where he raped her with his fingers as she lay on a gravel road.

Donovan said that Jolley then drove her home and she immediately took a shower. “I took a shower until the water ran cold,” she said. “I scrubbed myself until it hurt.”

When it was the defense’s turn, Mestek pointed out that Donovan is suing Jolley for his alleged wrongdoing, suggesting that she has a financial stake in his conviction. He also accused her of making up the rape back in 1994 to avoid moving away from her boyfriend — her parents were taking the family to Kansas — and to get out of trouble with her parents. Donovan snuck out of her house after she claims Jolley raped her and went to her boyfriend’s home and fell asleep in his bedroom. She told her parents the story of the alleged rape after they discovered where she was in the morning.

Edith Couture, an Oak Harbor resident, was seeing Jolley in the spring of 1999 when she claimed that he tried to molest her. She testified that, during a March 2, 1999 session at Jolley’s former Freeland office, Jolley started rubbing her back and then reached around to touch her breast. She said he stopped when she tensed up and called her a “scared little bird.”

In cross exam, Mestek asked her about lawsuit against Jolley and her claims that he and his wife — who used to work with Couture — made her workplace so uncomfortable that she quit and then somehow made it difficult for her to get a job. Mestek asked her, “You’re just making this up as you go along, aren’t you?” After that, Couture lost her composure and obviously became very angry with Mestek. She agreed that she blamed Jolley “for everything that went wrong in her life after that.”

Beyond the victims’ testimony, other evidence against Jolley came from Oak Harbor Detective Teri Gardner, who taped two phone calls between Porter and Jolley after the alleged incident. On the tape, which was played in court, Porter tells Jolley that she is concerned with him touching her breast and repeatedly asks him to promise not to do it again.

Jolley asks her to come to his office “to talk about that” and says he has made “a commitment to be very professional” with her, adding that she can keep the door to his office open.

“I deeply apologize if you felt unsafe,” Jolley says on the recording, then asks her several times if she told anyone else about what had happened.

But in a blow for the prosecution, Island County Superior County Judge Alan Hancock ruled that Henegen couldn’t introduce evidence of five other women who alleged that Jolley acted inappropriately toward them in a sexual manner. In all, Henegen developed a list of 12 women who claim to have been sexual abuses or harassed by Jolley.

“There’s no evidence that it actually occurred, by a preponderance of evidence…” Hancock said, referring to the allegations of the five other women. “I don’t believe these incidences show a common scheme or plan.”

You can reach features editor Jessie Stensland at jstensland@whidbeynewstimes.com or call 675-6611.