Is former Vacaville attorney James Glenn Haskell a monster who “dehumanized” three of his four adopted children, sexually assaulted the oldest girl and injured and humiliated two younger ones?
James G. Haskell, 42 (Solano County Sheriff’s Office)
Or is he the falsely accused, near-saint dad depicted in several “character letters” who tried to give them a good life but is now the victim of “fantastical,” unreliable witness testimony?
After a nine-week trial in Solano County Superior Court, 12 jurors will weigh in with answers on Tuesday, when they get the case following the completion of defense closing arguments and the prosecutor’s rebuttal.
Haskell faces 17 counts, misdemeanors and felonies, including sexual assault, alleged crimes that occurred between October 2018 and February 2022, when his four adopted children, three girls and a boy, were removed from his Vacaville home.
Additionally, allegations filed later in the case in September 2022 included four felony counts of sexual penetration with a foreign object while the victim, the oldest of three daughters, was unaware. Among the other counts are two felony charges for inflicting injury on a child. (The Reporter typically does not identify victims of sexual abuse or sexual assault.)
Haskell, 42, who remains out of custody on bail, has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
Deputy District Attorney Shelly Moore began her closing statements by saying “closing arguments are not evidence” and then called Haskell “the father of the year.” She described him as a well-spoken attorney and recalled for jurors that he was a member of the Vacaville Rotary, a former bishop in a Vacaville Mormon church ward, suggesting he was a member of the Vacaville community beyond reproach.
But, she added he was also someone, while taking the witness stand in his own defense, who offered self-serving, “gratuitous narratives.”
Calmly and deliberately pacing her comments, Moore called on jurors to apply the law as they consider the facts of the case, then defined “reasonable doubt,” saying they need not “eliminate all possible doubt.”
She asked them to consider sources of evidence, among them witness testimony, audio recordings, photos.
Moore then detailed the charges — two counts of sexual penetration of an unconscious (or sleeping) person, “unable to resist because she was unconscious and sexual penetration of a minor under 16 years of age and of a minor under 18 years. He also faces several charges of inflicting injury upon a child and willful cruelty of a child and four counts of lewd and lascivious acts with a child under 14 years of age.
The injury charges include choking the second-oldest daughter and the son, “banging a child’s head against a hard surface,” and did so willfully, but, Moore added, “injury is not required” for the charge.
She recounted several days of testimony, including some from the children, who described being forced to sleep on a cold bathroom floor, as punishment, and they also recounted being severely spanked with a belt and being pushed to either the driveway pavement or floor of their home.
Moore said the sexual touching and assault of the oldest girl “continued for two years” and the injuries to the second-oldest girl and boy only stopped when the abuse was reported to Solano County Sheriff’s Office deputies on Feb. 3, 2022. A Solano County Child Protective Services employee determined the children were unsafe and relocated them that very day.
It was about four weeks later, Moore reminded jurors, that the oldest girl confided in a family friend that she had been sexually assaulted while sleeping on a family couch. The family friend then reported the allegations to a Sheriff’s detective.
“The testimony of one person can prove any fact,” Moore told the jurors.
To the issue of a child being unable to remember exact details of an alleged crime or misdemeanor or offering conflicting testimony, she said jurors may accept “all parts that are credible.”
Moore reminded jurors of testimony that alleged Haskell “chased the boy” around the home with a belt, hitting him in the face during one whipping, bruising him so much that he did not attend school. And there were details of Haskell allegedly pulling the boy by the hair and choking him, testimony, she said, a child could not fabricate.
Haskell’s method of punishment was to “isolate and belittle” the boy and the second-oldest girl. “Power and control” is not normal parenting, Moore asserted.
As she spoke, Haskell, dressed in a light-gray sweater, shirt and tie over dark slacks, listened with a stern look on his face, taking notes as he sat next to his lawyer, well-known Fairfield criminal defense attorney Thomas Maas.
Perhaps the most shocking part of Moore’s argument came with her displaying color photos of the boy’s bruised buttocks after a belt-whipping and another photo of more than a half-dozen bruises, some old and yellowed with time and others freshly pink, on his back side, and still another photo showing a thin bruise, about two feet long, down one leg.
At one point, Maas objected and asserted that Moore misstated the law, but Judge Janice M. Williams told him he could argue his point during his own closing argument.
Moore called “fantastical testimony” Haskell’s assertion on the witness stand, that the the boy and the second-oldest daughter “self-harmed,” that is, inflicted some of the injuries they suffered on themselves.
Haskell’s “excuses” are “not believable,” she said, adding that his behavior “dehumanized” the children, some of whom testified that he punished them in “moments of anger and rage.”
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Moore recalled adult witness testimony that indicated inappropriate behavior with a foreign exchange student during a swimming pool party and another time with the oldest daughter “blatantly touching” her buttocks in church.
And she reminded jurors that the defendant asked one writer of a “character letter” after Haskell’s arrest to remove a reference that he had a “very close relationship” with the oldest daughter.
Moore said the oldest daughter, who testified, would not fabricate her allegations about “what happened almost every night while she slept on the couch” in the family’s Vacaville home Haskell shared with wife Emily.
“She wanted to stand up for what’s right and true,” Moore, ending her argument, said of the oldest daughter.
During the afternoon session, Maas reminded jurors that Moore must prove that his client not only did what is alleged but that he also acted with a particular intent and/or mental state.
He also appeared to caution the jurors against using circumstantial evidence, saying that the prosecutor must convince them she has proved each fact beyond a reasonable doubt.
Jurors, he said, heard testimony that Haskell tried to provide the children, whom he and wife Emily, adopted in 2019, with “a good life.”
For a part of his argument, Maas showed several photos of a smiling and happy family gathered together. And he also disputed allegations that Haskell occasionally displayed inappropriate behavior with the oldest daughter, asking rhetorically, “What kind of father would push away an adopted child?”
He repeatedly cited statements made by some of the children to investigators that conflicted with their statements on the witness stand.
Maas also noted the children were happy to visit with the parents during supervised visits monitored by Solano County social workers.
He questioned the two oldest daughters taking some weeks or months to allege to investigators about sexual abuse.
One of the girls, while on the witness stand, was “making up a story right in front of you,” he told the jurors.
The Haskells, he added “cared about their adopted children.”
Citing several character letters, which he advised Haskell to seek out from family friends, Maas said one of them, written by Andrea Mattson, indicated she would trust her own children with his client.
For about an hour, Maas showed slides of court transcripts that brought into question the second-oldest daughter’s allegation that Haskell touched her on the thigh and near her vagina, not two inches away, but, putting his two hands together, showed the girl indicated the distance was six inches or more.
If found guilty, Haskell faces two life sentences and will be required to register as a sex offender.
Maas’ closing argument resumes at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, followed by Moore’s rebuttal.
Afterward, following Williams’ final instructions, jurors will begin deliberations.
