Sex offender’s trial abbreviated

Testimony started and ended Wednesday in a trial that could put Level III sex offender Terry Milton Moncrief in prison for the rest of his life.

Moncrief, 43, didn’t testify, and no one testified on his behalf. His entire defense will consist of Assistant Public Defender Al Rossi’s closing arguments to the jury today. Rossi gave no opening statement and no indication of his strategy.

Moncrief is charged with third-degree child molestation, sexual exploitation of a minor and possession of photos of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct – all involving a Spokane boy, who is now 16.

“When he first started touching me, I was hesitant,” the alleged victim said. “I didn’t really know, because I didn’t really grow up with a dad.”

Moncrief told him not to tell his mother because “she wouldn’t understand,” the boy testified.

Eventually, the teen told jurors, Moncrief began photographing him nude and in thong underwear and sexually suggestive boxer shorts.

“Basically, out of nowhere, he was like, ‘Let’s take these pictures and no one else will see them or anything like that,’ ” the boy testified.

Court rules prevented testimony about the convictions that caused Moncrief to be designated a Level III sex offender, the kind considered most likely to commit new sex crimes.

The boy’s older brother found the photos and told their mother. The mother called police.

Among the things jurors weren’t told is that, according to court documents, the photos were in a duffel bag that contained sex toys, condoms and other sexual aids.

Nor were jurors told that Moncrief originally was charged with raping the boy, and that the boy’s mother told police she saw pictures of Moncrief having sex with her son. The third-degree rape charge was reduced to third-degree child molestation when, in an interview last month with investigators, the boy said only that Moncrief touched him inappropriately.

Even with the reduced charge, a conviction would be Moncrief’s third and final “strike” under a state law designed to send violent criminals to prison for the rest of their lives without the possibility of parole. Jurors weren’t told that, either.

Moncrief was convicted in 1984 of two counts of taking indecent liberties with a 7-year-old boy in Fayetteville, N.C. A third count was dismissed. Authorities say the boy was from a family that considered Moncrief a friend.

Moncrief pleaded guilty to one count of indecent liberties and one count of first-degree child molestation in Redmond, Wash., and was sent to prison for 8 1/3 years in January 1991. A second count of first-degree child molestation was dismissed in that King County Superior Court plea bargain.

The victims in the Redmond crimes were the 11- and 16-year-old sons of one of Moncrief’s co-workers at a restaurant.