A Kenai Superior Court judge on Saturday dismissed six of the 61 charges against a former Soldotna High School teacher and union head accused of sexual abuse of a student.
Nathan Erfurth, 36, is a former SoHi history teacher and also former president of the Kenai Peninsula Education Association. He was arrested in May 2023 after a former student alleged that he had sexually abused her in 2017 and 2018 when she was a minor. He was indicted on 61 charges for those alleged crimes by a Kenai grand jury in June of that year, and has pleaded not guilty to each.
His attorney, Eric Derleth, filed a motion to dismiss the grand jury indictment and the 61 charges included within on Jan. 10, over six months ago. An evidentiary hearing was held April 12, and Judge Kelly Lawson issued her decision on the motion July 27. She granted the motion in part, dismissing six counts of possession of child pornography but denying the motion in regard to the 42 counts of second-degree sexual abuse of a minor, seven counts of fourth-degree sexual abuse of a minor and six counts of unlawful exploitation of a minor.
Lawson, in her order on the motion, writes that “the court finds that the grand jury presentation of evidence was ‘reasonably complete and fair,’” thus denying the motion for most of the charges.
Though charges were dismissed, she writes that the “deficiencies” in regard to those charges do not impact the strength of the evidence regarding other charges returned.
Derleth celebrated the decision on Wednesday, writing that his client is pleased by the ruling.
“(Erfurth) looks forward to proving his innocence at trial now that the true issues are brought into sharp relief by the judge’s ruling in his favor.”
On July 23, Erfurth filed a civil suit against the former student who made the allegations against him — seeking $100,000 for defamation. Derleth explained Wednesday that though the case is still ongoing, there is a two-year statute of limitations on defamation suits, and one year has already gone by.
Derleth says that in his practice he emphasizes helping people who were defamed and that such civil suits can help people reclaim their reputations.
“Prevailing in the criminal case is not a prerequisite to sustaining a defamation lawsuit and the pendency of the former does not extend the statute of limitations on the latter.”
In his January motion, Derleth argued that the evidence presented by the State of Alaska to the grand jury, specifically that which was based upon a series of recorded conversations between his client and the accuser, failed to characterize Erfurth’s repeated denials of the allegations made against him while focusing on a key moment wherein the state says Erfurth admitted guilt.
He also writes that the state never found child pornography on any of Erfurth’s devices. Those charges, he says, were based on statements by the accuser that child sex abuse material was created and that she and Erfurth had used an app that concealed message history, though no further evidence was presented to the grand jury to that end.
Because the grand jury wasn’t told that no images were found on Erfurth’s devices, Lawson writes in her order, those charges were dismissed. The state did not tell the grand jury that no images were found on Erfurth’s devices.
These were the claims that Derleth repeated in April. At the nearly two-hour evidentiary hearing, he presented roughly 20 minutes of audio clips from the recordings made by Alaska State Troopers of conversations between Erfurth and the accuser. In the clips, Erfurth repeatedly denied allegations made against himself and encouraged the other speaker to go back to police and say that she made the allegations up.
“If this accusation persists, my career is over,” Erfurth says in one clip.
“The only way this gets better is if you tell people that it was made up,” he says in another.
In her order, Judge Lawson says that the court finds that the presentation of evidence was “sufficient,” and while the grand jury was presented the excerpts of the final conversation, they were told that they were only hearing part of one recording, that there were other recordings where Erfurth had made statements that didn’t support the allegations.
Central to Derleth’s argument were concerns about a moment described in the original charging documents from May where Erfurth was allegedly asked by the accuser if he “regretted sleeping with me.” Erfurth’s response was “If this is how I’m being repaid for it, yes.”
Erfurth’s response was not to the question described by the state, Derleth said. The audio quality of the recording makes the words almost unintelligible, because the conversation happened on an outdoor porch. Derleth said that the question Erfurth was responding to was instead if he “regretted taking me in.” To support his claim, he presented that audio clip as cleaned up in Adobe Audition by Erfurth himself, though the audio remained largely unintelligible.
In her order, Judge Lawson writes that after reviewing the recordings as presented both to the grand jury and as edited by Erfurth, she “finds it very difficult in both situations to ascertain all of the words uttered.” So, she says, the presentation of the words as heard by the investigator cannot be called “purposefully unfair or misleading.”
Derleth has said repeatedly that the state hasn’t ever asked the accuser what she asked Erfurth.
“The state’s theory of the case does not solely rest on that one sentence,” the prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Julie Matucheski, said during the evidentiary hearing.
Matucheski asked Erfurth during the hearing if he had been made aware of the criminal investigation before the recordings were made. He said he was notified of the investigation by the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District, who placed him on leave.
Matucheski also pushed Erfurth on his repeated instructions to the accuser, in the clips presented during the hearing, “you repeatedly said to her, she had to lie.”
Erfurth said that he didn’t tell her to lie, he told her to say the claims were fantasy. That was, he said, the “logical conclusion” to the claims brought forward.
Erfurth is scheduled for an omnibus hearing on Aug. 12, with a trial currently scheduled for Sept. 30. His trial has so far been postponed nine times.
Reach reporter Jake Dye at jacob.dye@peninsulaclarion.com.
