Second mistrial in Schuylkill child sex assault case

It’s a second mistrial in the case against Keith McFarland, 40, of Palmerton.

The second trial was a mirror of the first. After listening to testimony for a full day and deliberating more than four hours, a Schuylkill County jury could not agree on a verdict for any of the four charges against McFarland.

A jury had the same result when McFarland was tried in August. It will be up to prosecutors to decide whether or not to try the case again.

McFarland, then living in Tamaqua, was arrested Oct. 25, 2018, by Tamaqua Police Department Cpl. Thomas Rogers and charged with rape of a child, indecent assault, indecent exposure and corruption of minors.

“I’m glad the jury took such great pains in their deliberations and recognized that there are two sides to every story,” said attorney Christine Holman, who represented McFarland in both trials. “There were too many inconsistencies in the commonwealth’s case.”

According to testimony, the child reported the alleged sexual contact to her grandmother, who made a report to the Child Advocacy Center. The center relayed the report to Schuylkill County Children and Youth and the District Attorney’s office.

The girl, then 8, now 9, had begun to live with her grandmother in Bath in January 2018 and made the disclosure in October 2018, according to the grandmother’s testimony.

The child’s mother, who lives in Lansford, testified that she and her three children lived with McFarland in Tamaqua between late 2013 and fall 2015, moving out before the start of the school year.

The mother had started a new relationship with McFarland’s next-door neighbor and the two moved in together before the woman moved in with her father. The mother said she learned of the reported incident involving one of her daughters when the grandmother called her about it in October 2018.

In her testimony, the mother said she and McFarland “had a pretty good relationship.” She described him a gentle, kind and caring, and hardworking. She said that she had given up custody of her children to the grandmother “so I could work through issues of my own.”

The victim, now 9, has a developmental disability. In response to questions from prosecutor Julie Werdt, she described an incident where “someone did something bad to me” while her mother had taken her sisters to McDonald’s to buy food. A crux of the testimony was the use of a picture drawn by the child, which depicts a sexual assault. Under cross-examination, Holman asked her specific questions about her testimony — comparing the testimony she had given at the previous trial to testimony she had given in the present trial.

Werdt also called Dr. Marla Farrell, who examined the victim in October 2018. She said she had found no sign of trauma or lesion but added that would be common since two or three years had passed.

McFarland also testified.

In her closing, Holman said that the prosecution’s case was deficient, full of inconsistent statements. She said there was no medical evidence to support the charges and no police investigation of physical evidence. She also pointed out how many times the child had been unable to answer questions, and instead said “I don’t know.”

“At least 50 times, I’m not sure,” Holman said. “And that is significant in this case — there are way too many doubts.”

Werdt asked jurors to consider how children remember things as they evaluated the evidence.

“When children remember things, do they remember every specific thing?” she asked. “They remember events.”