By CHRIS MEYERS
Staff writer

     After six hours of deliberation, a four-woman, eight-man jury decided the former director of a local summer camp was not guilty of the charges filed against her for a sexual relationship with an underage counselor.
     The hallway outside Whitley Circuit Court became a mini celebration of friends and family shortly after midnight this morning after 38-year-old Tara L. Brandon was found not guilty on all 33 counts she faced.
     She had been charged with 15 class B felony counts of sexual misconduct with a minor and 18 class D felony counts of child solicitation for a relationship which the alleged victim said lasted from the fall of 2006 to the spring of 2009.
     Her attorney, Pat Arata, said after the verdict was read that he thanked the jury for its careful examination of the evidence, and he had “nothing but respect” for Whitley County Prosecutor Matt Rentschler.
     Brandon herself took the stand for the first half of the final day of the trial Thursday.
     She outlined how the alleged victim, who had been 15 to 17 years old during the alleged relationship, had made threats to her before about allegations of a relationship between the two.
     “At that point in time (November 2008), he said I’d better not talk to his mom because she thinks I’ve been hitting on him,” Brandon said, and also denied having any direct involvement in ending the boy’s relationships with girls his own age as he and his mother had testified.
     Brandon realized just how far the accusations had gone when she received a call from a fellow work release employee in April 2009, who said a police detective wanted to talk with Brandon.
     “That’s when I decided it was much bigger than one of his typical lies,” she said of the alleged victim’s accusations.
     In tears, Brandon explained how she had to have friends take photos of her body to show the scars from past surgeries, which the defense claimed the victim was not able to correctly describe.
     Aside from being humiliated by the charges and the photos, Brandon explained how she has lost her job at Camp Whitley, Whitko High School and the Whitley County Work Release Center.
     “I didn’t do these things … and for the last nine months, I have been through hell,” Brandon said.
    Arata, showed a real estate transaction for the end of September when Brandon bought a house in Columbia City, nearly a month after the date the teen told police he had an encounter with Brandon at her house.
     She adamantly denied any sexual contact with the victim in Whitley County or on an end-of-the-summer trip to Gatlinburg, Tenn., which is where the alleged victim said first contact occurred.
     Brandon also denied she gave the boy a key to her house and bought him a cell phone to stay in contact with him, as the victim and his mother had testified earlier.
     As for a prepaid cellular TracFone, which police identified as the one used to send defaming text messages to the alleged victim’s girlfriend, Brandon acknowledged she bought the phone for her grandfather and registered it under a fake name.
     The name matched that of a former student, although two letters were transposed.
     Brandon said she just typed at random and that was the name which was entered. She said she did not use her real name because she was going to give the phone to her grandfather, and she did not want to use his information because he had been scammed in the past.
     “I didn’t choose anything. I just typed what my fingers hit,” Brandon said under cross-examination by Rentschler.
     Arata claimed the messages in question could not have been sent by Brandon because many of them were sent at a time when she was with others, and no one saw her get or send messages.
     He asserted that a friend of the victim’s had stolen the phone and sent the messages so the alleged victim’s girlfriend would break up with him and hopefully there would not be any more friction with Brandon, as had been occurring recently.
     The defense also focused on the views members of the Camp Whitley Board of Directors had of Brandon and the former counselor.
     Those who testified, including board president Carrie Gates, Randy Plew and Brian Bills, who is also an Indiana State Trooper, said they all believe Brandon is a very credible person and that the alleged victim has been known to lie and exaggerate stories.
     “I believe Tara to be a very truthful individual,” Gates said.
     Both she and Bills felt it was inappropriate for the boy’s mother to ask Brandon to keep an eye on the people with whom he spent time.
     Bills and former co-director Katie Strandlund both said despite some instances of behavior problems from the alleged victim while a counselor, it would have been “awkward” to fire him from the camp because of his mother’s relationship to Camp Whitley.
     Gates said she was surprised to learn several former counselors testified Brandon had supplied them with alcohol or allowed them to drink in her presence while underage.
     The board members also said they never saw alcohol at the camp.
     “I have never seen alcohol at Camp Whitley. Period,” Plew said.

Bringing it to a close
     For Rentschler, the case was not a simple “he said, she said,” and was backed by an eyewitness account, phone records and the credibility of the witness, who came forward with the accusations a month before his senior year in high school finished.
     “The last few weeks of high school are often the best time of someone’s life,” but the victim had to endure finger-pointing, snickering and rumors, Rentschler said in his closing arguments, and questioned what possible motive the teen had to make up these allegations.
     Brandon had said earlier she thought he lied about the encounters as a way to get back at her for not letting him move in with her in 2008.
     Rentschler said the alleged victim had to bare his personal and mental health history to the jury, which added to his credibility of having nothing to gain from lying.
     Aside from testimony, Rentschler said there was much more which warranted a conviction for Brandon.
     “We’re able to follow the paper trail … the paper trail leads back to Tara Brandon,” he said of the phone records.
     If it was all a lie, Rentschler questioned why the victim first told two friends of the encounters in February 2009.
     “The conspiracy must have started in February,” he said sarcastically.
     He also focused on a conversation with two counselors where Brandon said her “life was over” after she learned from the victim that he had come forward to his mother.
     “’My life is over!’ Those are the comments of a guilty person … that doesn’t fit with an innocent person,” Rentschler said.
     As for Arata, “the Devil is in the details.”
     And for this case, it was the lack of details which he felt proved Brandon was wrongfully accused.
     Of the 33 counts filed, Arata said the teen could not provide any details on the encounters, with the exception of a couple instances.
     “Thirty-three counts. Do you have any details? This is a circumstantial evidence case,” he said.
     He also questioned how the victim could not remember details of his first encounter with Brandon, nor give a full description of scars and marks on her body, which Arata said was “irrefutable evidence” that the alleged victim had lied.
     “Talk about the humiliation of having to go through that,” he said of the photos taken of Brandon’s body.
     “She’s had to lose her dignity in this court room by exposing herself to all of you,” Arata said as he held one of the photos up to the jury.
     He also said it was a friend of the alleged victim who stole the phone from Brandon and sent the messages to the victim’s girlfriend.
     As during the final day of testimony, he also focused in his closing arguments on the credibility of the victim, compared to the credibility of Brandon, and how his statements cannot be backed up with tangible evidence.
     “It’s physically impossible … it’s all poppycock … it’s just absolutely unbelievable,” Arata said.