COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. -- The first of what prosecutors anticipate will be several students took the stand Wednesday in the trial for a former police officer accused of sexually assaulting boys.
The first boy to testify in the trial for Josh Carrier was a 12-year-old. The boy said the "skin checks" performed by Carrier happened before matches, where Carrier would touch the inner thighs of the boys to check for ringworm.
The boy said "tighty whities" were required for the checks to keep from having to take off all clothing. At least once, the boy wasn't wearing the required underwear, so Carrier made him drop his underwear to his knees.
"I thought it was kind of awkward, but I thought it was mandatory," the boy said.
Carrier, a former Colorado Springs Police officer, was also a school resource officer and volunteer wrestling coach at Horace Mann Middle School. The boy said he and the other wrestling coaches would bring the team into the locker room for weigh-ins and to check for ringworm before each match.
The boy said Carrier would always tell them what he was looking for. He told prosecutors he decided to continue wrestling this year because there were different coaches.
The boy's parents also took the stand.
"He said it was creepy and weird, but said everyone was doing it so he didn't think anything of it," the mother said of what her son told her about Carrier touching his genitals.
She also said her son was teased, with students saying things like "Haha! You got raped by your coach."
The boy's father testified his son told him Carrier wore gloves while "moving his genitals from left to right." He said his son told him the checks were "part of wrestling" but that he felt "betrayed" by Carrier later because he trusted the coach.
A 14-year-old former wrestler said he didn't wresle this year "because of what happened."
"I was on a scale, and that's when he touched me. He said he saw a mark on me," the 14-year-old said.
The boy said he trusted Carrier and was told the skin checks were for medical reasons, so he didn't tell his parents.
"I was embarrassed and humiliated. I didn't want to go around saying that's what happened to me," he said. "I was like 'Oh Lord.' I wanted to run out of there."
The boy's father said it "made him feel sick" when his son told him Carrier had pulled on the foreskin of his penis durng his testimony Wednesday.
Another 12-year-old followed his father's testimony to end the day. That boy, another wrestler at the time of the incident, said he knew Carrier wasn't a doctor but thought he had a medical degree, making it okay for the officer to touch him. He said Carrier touched and stroked his genitals, then used tweezers to remove what the boy's doctor said were ingrown hairs.
The boy testified Carrier told fellow coach Nick Graham "you know what to do," prompting Graham to leave the room before Carrier began touching him.
"I thought it was really weird," the boy said.
Throughout the boy's testimony, his father was wiping tears from his face while sitting in the courtroom listening.
The father, who said he went to every single practice and game, said he saw wrestlers fake injuries to avoid being looked at by Carrier. He broke down on the stand when he talked about the things his son said had happened to him.
"I can't believe things like that happened to my son," he said through tears.
He later pulled his son from the school.
Carrie Butierres, a volunteer coordinator at the school, also took the stand. She said Carrier would come to her and ask for copies of the boys' physicals. She became concerned when he made inappropriate comments about the boys' puberty levels.
Her sons also attend the school and were on the wrestling team at the time. She said her sons told her it was "policy" for Carrier to perform skin checks on them to check for rashes and ringworm.
Carrier was arrested in May 2011 on more than 200 charges of sexual assault and sexual exploitation involving at least 15 students. He faces life in prison if convicted.
Wednesday was day four of the trial, which continues Thursday and is expected to last at least a month.
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