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Sex charges continue in shelter worker trial By DANI DODGE Mail Tribune A 17-year-old girl described to a Jackson County jury Wednesday how sex started between her and a supervisor more than twice her age at the Youth Diagnostic Shelter in Talent. "After everyone else was asleep .... he would come back to our room and talk to us and it just led from there," said the girl of the encounters, which began a year and a half ago. "From there, ummm, he'd ask us to flash him out of nowhere." The girl with the thick rich mane of brunette hair and a heart-shaped locket around her neck went onto say that Wayne Randall Gatrel began to ask her for oral sex, give her oral sex and actually engaged in intercourse. "It grossed me out," she said of one incident. "But I was afraid he would turn around and say I was doing bad things and I would have to go to Hillcrest (the Youth Correctional Facility in Salem)." Gatrel, 43, of Medford is on trial in Jackson County Circuit Court for 12 counts of various forms of sexual abuse and another count of racketeering for alleged sexual misconduct with minors at the shelter for at-risk youth and teens. His trial, being held before Judge Ray White, began Tuesday. Testimony is expected to conclude today with Gatrel taking the stand. By the end of the day Wednesday, four teenagers had testified that Gatrel had allowed them to engage in sexual acts at the shelter as he watched. In a separate incident, another girl said Gatrel allowed her to have her boyfriend come to the shelter after grabbing her buttocks. After the boyfriend's visit, the girl said Gatrel asked her to show him her vagina. When she refused, he asked her to flash her breasts and she did. Also testifying Wednesday was Desiree Joy Seiver, 23. Seiver worked the Friday and Saturday night shift with Gatrel from October 2000 to April 2001. The shelter, formerly run by Community Works, was closed down in April. It has since reopened under the management of Jackson County. Seiver pleaded guilty to racketeering and sexual crimes for having sex with six of the boys at the shelter. She is serving a 50-month sentence at the Eastern Oregon Correctional Institute. In a voice that was sometimes so quiet her comments were inaudible, she admitted that rules went by the wayside when she and Gatrel supervised - youth stayed up late and smoked. "We talked about it a couple times and how it needed to stop, but it never did," she said. "When it started it was harmless enough, but it got out of control." Seiver said she told Gatrel she was attracted to a resident even before she had sex with him. "He made good points that in other countries (the boy) would be married by then," Seiver said. "But (he said) it wasn't safe in this setting because of laws and things in our culture." Yet, later Gatrel walked in on Seiver laying underneath a male resident, she said. "He said "it looks like you need some time and turned around and walked out,'" Seiver testified. She added that, in later conversation he said "not to get pregnant. He said it wasn't a problem for him, because he was fixed." Although the teens testified to similar incidents at the shelter, some of the details appeared inconsistent. For instance, the 17-year-old with the dark mane of hair told police she didn't have sex with Gatrel. In her testimony Wednesday, she said he had begun the sexual act when he heard Seiver returning to the shelter. He jumped off her and left her bedroom. Asked why she didn't tell police, she said the officer had asked her if she had sex with Gatrel. She didn't consider what occurred sex. Asked what she considered sex, the girl replied: "More than two seconds." After prosecutor Michael Newman rested the state's case Wednesday, defense attorney Larry Parker made a motion to dismiss a count of harassment. The count alleged that Gatrel had handcuffed a teenage boy. Although the boy testified that he had been handcuffed, he didn't say he felt harassed by the action. The judge dismissed the charge. Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.