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Bus driver convicted for affair with girl

From staff reports

A 63-year-old Grand Coulee, Wash., man has been convicted of first-degree sexual misconduct for having sex with a high school girl while he was her school bus driver.

While convicting Dennis A. Clinkenbeard of that charge, an Okanogan County jury acquitted him Friday of two counts of second-degree child molestation. The alleged molestation involved what authorities said were fondling incidents earlier in a long-term sexual relationship with the student.

A friend of the victim told authorities the illicit relationship began with suggestive communications when the victim was 12 years old. The friend said the affair had proceeded to public kissing by the time the victim was 14.

Coulee Dam police found out about the affair last summer when the victim graduated from Lake Roosevelt High School. Witnesses said Clinkenbeard and the young woman spent all their time together and she caressed him intimately during a senior class excursion to the Silverwood theme park at Athol, Idaho.

Grand Coulee School District Superintendent Dennis Chambers said he found nothing wrong in April last year when he investigated complaints about Clinkenbeard’s relationship with the student. Chambers said he believed his predecessor conducted a similarly fruitless investigation 1 1/2 years earlier.

Police said Clinkenbeard acknowledged having sex with the girl last year. By that time, the victim was 18 and legally able to consent to sex, but state law prohibits school employees from having sex with students.

That law was the basis for Clinkenbeard’s conviction. It carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Clinkenbeard is awaiting sentencing before Superior Court Judge Jack Burchard.

Clinkenbeard also was charged with communication with a minor for immoral purposes for allegedly asking the victim’s friend – the one who gave evidence against him – to pose for nude photographs in December 2002, when she was 17. That charge was dismissed last fall on grounds that Burchard’s court lacked jurisdiction.