Trinity Administration Trial: Day Three

MIDLAND, Texas (KOSA) -Day three of the Trinity Trial started with the defense bringing in an investigator from Kerr County who specializes in digital and computer forensics. Flores was part of the search warrant back in 2022

In his testimony, he talked about how one drive that holds anywhere between six to eight terabytes can take up to a week to copy all the material. In this specific case, ten drives had to be copied and the investigator explained that this took 10 weeks to get all the information needed for this case.

The alleged victim and the boy communicated via Instagram and some of those messages had been deleted. Because of this, the defense asked the investigator if it was possible to retrieve those deleted messages to which he said it is possible to retrieve old messages.

The next witness, a former classmate of the alleged victim, came to the stand to testify about telling administrators at Trinity about the suspected inappropriate behavior on two separate occasions.

The first report: December 12, 2019.

The classmate said he approached Todd Freese because he felt he could trust him and he thought someone higher up needed to know about the incident.

In the meeting, the classmate told Freese he saw the alleged victim in distress and crying but he never saw any butt grabbing or any other inappropriate touching.

He said he was instructed by administrators to not go around discussing the incident.

A month passed and the student decided to have a second meeting with Freese. During this meeting, the student had more information regarding the situation with the alleged victim and the boy.

This was the end of the prosecution’s questioning of the classmate.

During the defense’s cross-examination, the boy admitted the alleged victim could sometime be a “drama queen”.

After this testimony, the jury was dismissed for a hearing involving the alleged victim’s mom.

The evidence that came into question was a confidentiality agreement with the mother of the alleged victim.

After talks with the judge, the prosecutors, and the defense, the judge ruled that the evidence in question would not be used in open court.

After this ruling, the jury was brought back into the courtroom and the prosecutors began to question the mother for several hours.

During this time the mother of the alleged victim had explained why she and her husband chose Trinity for their children where the mother explained that her husband had gone to Trinity and knew that Trinity had an upstanding reputation.

The alleged victim started going to Trinity at the age of 2 until the age of 13. The mother said before the incident that the alleged victim enjoyed school where she was involved in several extracurricular activities.

It wasn’t until December 2019 that the mother saw a change in the alleged victim.

The mother said she found out about the relationship between the boy and her daughter by seeing messages on her daughter’s phone that shocked her. The mother questioned her daughter about the incident and said that the daughter was honest about everything.

Later that night after telling the girl’s father, the family talked about the messages and it was agreed later that the mother and father would email Freese on Thursday, December 12th, 2019.

The family went the entire weekend without a word back from Freese.

They did, however, hear from a friend who sent apologies about what happened to their daughter.

This exchange happened Monday, December 16 around 4:30 p.m, the parents had still not heard back from the school at this time.

The mother called the school after the conversation with her friend but this was after hours so the call went to voicemail.

The parents then decided to go to the school that Tuesday the 17th to speak in person with Freese.

During this meeting with the parent and Freese, the parents learned that the school had known about the incident already because of the classmate who approached Freese.

The parents were also told that Freese never received their email and it ended up in Freese’s spam folder.

After Christmas break, the mother had a meeting with Shelby Hammer and Adrianne Clifton where the mother claimed there was no progress in the meeting and Hammer had changed the topic from trying to change policy with the school to talking about the incident which at the time left the mother in an emotional state.

Due to her feelings about that meeting, the mother had another meeting this time with Freese and Clifton.

Another month went and according to the mother, there was still no progress.

At this time the alleged victim and accused boy still had a class together and Crystal Myers had said it would be easier to move the alleged victim versus the boy accused.

The mother said, the parents of the teen boy wanted to reach out to the alleged victim’s family since they had known each other for several years but the alleged victim’s family declined to speak.

Once a new school year started the alleged victim went back to school at Trinity and according to the mother, her daughter was less talkative and harder to motivate in the morning.

At this point, a month of classes had passed and the family wanted to move their daughter to a new school.

The alleged victim transferred to Midland Christian and during her time at that school experienced the Midland Christian arrest.

This incident at Midland Christian caused the girl’s mother to reach out for the first time to MPD to file a report against Trinity’s failure to report sexual misconduct for her daughter.

During today’s trial, the defense would show the jury text messages between the mother and friend of hers discussing the arrest of the three Midland Christians as well as the arrest of the four admins from Trinity.

The messages would reveal that the mother never thought that Adrianne Clifton or Chrystal Myers should have been arrested.

The mother would go on to say she wanted Freese and Hammer to be held accountable for this.

Day four of this case will continue on Monday at 9 a.m.