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WEST JORDAN — "When I sit on his lap, when I get on the bus, or I'm waiting for my teacher to come."
Those were the words of a 6-year-old girl who took the witness stand Thursday to testify that her bus driver, John Martin Carrell, touched her inappropriately when he drove her to a special-needs pre-K program at Altara Elementary.
In the vernacular of a child, the girl described Carrell touching her, saying it happened "every day," and that Carrell asked her if it hurt.
Carrell, of Draper, is facing 33 counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child, a first-degree felony, accused of sexually abusing two girls with special needs who were 5 years old at the time.
On Thursday, the first day of his trial, Carrell's attorneys told jurors that the bus driver overstepped his role when he befriended them, but he never touched them inappropriately.
When Carrell, 62, held a little girl on his lap or put his arm around her, it was because she had become frightened and cried when she first started riding the bus, defense attorney Ron Yengich said. When he lingered over her while unbuckling her seat belt, it was to collect the items she had pulled out of backpack during the trip.
As a grandfather, he had bonded with the girl, looking out for her on her way to school, he said.
"It's true. He talked to her, he paid attention to her," Yengich said during opening arguments.
On cross-examination, the girl denied being sad on her first day of school and denied crying on the bus. The defense attorney then asked whether Carrell was kind to her.
"I don't know," the girl answered, less composed.
Yengich urged jurors during to consider the full context of what they will see on surveillance footage from Carrell's bus.
You have to watch what occurred and not assume anything, not presume anything, and not infer anything. These are scary cases. We want to protect the children. ... Are we looking to see what we want to see because an allegation has been made, or are we putting everything in context?
–Defense attorney Ron Yengich
"You have to watch what occurred and not assume anything, not presume anything, and not infer anything," he told the six-woman, four-man jury. "These are scary cases. We want to protect the children. ... Are we looking to see what we want to see because an allegation has been made, or are we putting everything in context?"
Prosecutors, however, say the context is clear: The driver paid an inordinate amount of attention to two little girls on his bus.
Deputy Salt Lake County district attorney Tyson Hamilton told jurors they will see a pattern emerge in the surveillance footage, as Carrell consistently spends about four times as long unbuckling the then-5-year-old girl's seat belt or sits in the driver's seat with the girl standing between his legs.
A similar pattern emerged for the second girl, another 5-year-old on a different route, Hamilton said. As the girls stand near him, his hands are generally hidden, held low near their skirts or pants, he said.
The alleged abuse occurred daily, Hamilton said.
Each of the 33 charges Carrell faces carries a potential maximum prison sentence of 15 years to life.
An investigation into Carrell's interactions with the children began after the girl who testified Thursday made a comment to her father about sitting on the driver's lap and being touched.
"I'll remember that day the rest of my life," the girl's father said during his brief testimony Thursday.
The father said he put his daughter on the bus when it arrived five minutes later, in shock and disbelief, then followed it to the elementary school where it parked out front and sat for several minutes until teachers arrived to pick up their students. The next morning he asked again, and together he and his wife decided to contact the school and not to put their only daughter back on the bus.
School officials, who testified of beginning the initial review into the allegations against Carrell, said the driver had been trained that generally only high-fives and fist-bumps were considered appropriate interactions with the children. Drivers are all informed there are cameras aboard their buses, they said.
Since his initial statement to school district officials, Carrell has denied the allegations.
"I've never touched any student in an inappropriate manner," he wrote in the statement quoted in court Thursday. "I've had my arms around them and held their hands, but I've never done anything inappropriate."
The trial is scheduled to last seven days.
