Boy says he posed nude for teacher

Teen testifies that science instructor changed F to B

Sue Lindsay, Rocky Mountain News

Published February 13, 2007 at midnight

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A boy told a judge Monday that his eighth-grade science teacher changed a failing test grade after he reluctantly agreed to let the teacher take nude photos of him.

The boy, now 17, testified in the Jefferson County trial of former Everitt Middle School teacher Marshall Walker, who is charged with 54 counts of taking erotic photos and videos of three boys to whom he offered gifts of guns and hunting equipment.

The boy said Walker offered to take him skeet shooting and they were gathering equipment at Walker's home in 2003 when he spotted a pornographic DVD. Walker became concerned after the boy made a joke about it, telling the boy that now he had "dirt" on him, the boy said.

"He said I could make him lose his job, that he could lose everything," the boy said. After they returned from shooting, he said Walker proposed the nude photos.

"I told him no. He persisted," the boy said.

Walker offered him a deck of pornographic playing cards with nude women if he would pose. The boy declined.

Walker then offered him a duck call. The boy still refused.

"Then he mentioned my failing the last test," the boy said. "He said if I did this for him, he would raise my grade up to a B on the test. I thought about it, and I needed that grade on the test. So I told him OK."

"As I laid on the bed, he kind of circled around and took pictures. I laid down because I was really uncomfortable. I was feeling helpless, just scared, small, tiny."

The next day at school, the boy said they acted "like it never happened. I blocked it out. I was very embarrassed. I didn't want to think about it."

The boy said he told only his best friend and tried to forget about it until last year, when his family was watching a movie that depicted a counselor taking nude photos of a boy.

He said he couldn't sleep that night and told his father the next day.

Walker was arrested in the Everitt Middle School parking lot May 5, after the boy made a call, with law enforcement listening in.

The teacher repeatedly denied knowing what his former student was talking about.

Police subsequently executed search warrants at Walker's home and his parents' home, seizing homemade erotic videos and dozens of erotic photos of young boys, including a stack of more than 30 photos of nude boys tucked into his appointment book.

Police were able to track down two other victims from those tapes and photos. One is a boy whose father had committed suicide and who was an eighth-grader at Bell Middle School when Marshall was student-teaching there in 1997.

The third was another Everitt student, whose single mother viewed Marshall as a "godsend," prosecutors said, for taking an interest in her son during the 2002-03 school year.

A judge, rather than a jury, is hearing the case. The defense told the court that Marshall never touched the boys or asked them to have sexual contact with him. Those facts could become significant because attorney Harvey Steinburg has argued that several of the charges the teacher faces require prosecutors to show he intended to have sexual contact with the boys.

The trial will continue today.

lindsays@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5181

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