UTAH STATE PRISON — When she sent David Serbeck to prison last year, 3rd District Judge Elizabeth Hruby-Mills said she was troubled that Serbeck did not own up to what he did.

Because of his resistance, she sentenced him to serve up to 10 years in prison — two consecutive terms of zero to five years and one identical concurrent term for his conviction on three third-degree felonies.

Now Serbeck has been denied parole as he holds steadfast to his assertion that he is innocent. The Utah Board of Pardons and Parole voted this week to keep Serbeck in prison and scheduled another parole hearing in September of 2015.

Serbeck was convicted in March of 2012 of three counts of unlawful sexual activity with a minor for having sexual relations with a then-17-year-old neighbor girl in 2007. Previously, he was in the news for the high-profile 2009 shooting in a Bluffdale neighborhood while he said he was on neighborhood watch. That shooting left Serbeck paralyzed. Reginald Campos was subsequently convicted of attempted murder and was sentenced to three years to life in prison. In March, Campos asked the Utah Court of Appeals for a new trial.

During his parole hearing in June, parole board member Robert Yeates read the facts of the case as determined by a jury. But Serbeck told him they were false, starting with the claim he first kissed the teen at his house when she helped clean his snake cages.

"That statement is totally false. In a way, she's the one who kissed me after I washed her hand after she got bit by a snake. As for sexual intercourse, there was never any sexual intercourse," he said. "I believe that in three and a half years of being in the media, I didn't have a fair trial. I don't believe I even had a fair judge. So I believe it was biased on both sides. And that's just my honest belief."

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Serbeck found guilty of sex with teen neighbor

David Serbeck took the stand in his own defense Thursday and adamantly denied any sort of sexual contact with his teenage neighbor.

Serbeck also called his defense attorney ineffective.

Yeates told Serbeck that the problem the board faced was that it couldn't consider parole for him until he completes sex offender treatment, and completing sex offender treatment is traditionally contingent on a person admitting the facts of their crime.

"I'm sitting here telling you the truth, but I'm being punished because I'm telling you the truth. You're telling me I can't complete sex offender treatment because I'm not accepting responsibility. Well I'm telling you, I'm telling you the truth, and now I feel like I'm being persecuted against because I'm telling you the truth," Serbeck said.

When asked whether he denied all responsibility, Serbeck replied: "I accept the fact that she was a friend, we got close. I accept the fact that yes, we did kiss."

Serbeck said he and the teen kissed twice, but he denied having intercourse with her. He believed everyone in the small neighborhood was like family.

"I honestly thought it was a good friendship," he said. "I felt like she was a friend. I felt like her father was a friend."

When asked how the teen knew details about parts of Serbeck's anatomy, Serbeck said she may have overheard him joking about it on the phone.

He told Yeates, however, that he'd be willing to enter sex offender treatment if he would be accepted. Yeates said whether he would be accepted without admitting to having sex with a juvenile as he was convicted of, would be up to the program organizers.

When Serbeck was shot and paralyzed in 2009, he and another man had been patrolling their neighborhood in an SUV when they came across two teenage girls walking — one of whom was Campos' daughter. The daughter said the same SUV later aggressively followed her, prompting her to tell her father. The father then grabbed his gun and drove around looking for the vehicle.

Serbeck said he had merely stopped to check on the girls and later followed their vehicle because it matched the description of a vehicle suspected in a rash of burglaries.

Campos confronted the men and fired two shots at Serbeck, severing his spine. The victim in Serbeck's unrelated sex abuse case said she believes he was using the neighborhood watch program as a ruse to look for victims.

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