Missoula (23 page)

Beth Huguet testified that Allison “has always been very open and honest with me and has confided in me about a lot of things. I’ve
always believed we’ve had maybe a stronger mother-daughter relationship than…a lot of other mothers do. I think part of this is from me being a high school teacher: I’m able to have an honest rapport with the kids. And I have a pretty good BS detector, so I can figure out when my children are telling me things.”

Asked by Van Valkenburg to describe Beau Donaldson when he was growing up, Beth explained that the Target Range neighborhood where Beau and Allison were raised and attended school together is a tight community. “That group of kids,” she said, “were always very close, took care of each other, looked out for each other. I know Allison always looked at Beau as the big brother that she didn’t have.” When Van Valkenburg asked Beth Huguet about the night Donaldson raped Allison, she told the court about being awakened in the middle of the night by a phone call from Allison pleading, “Save me, Mom! Help me….He’s chasing me down an alley.”

As Allison ran for her life, Beth told the court, she could hear a male voice in the background, commanding Allison to stop and warning her not to say anything. “I thought, ‘God, I know that voice,’ ” Beth said. After driving across town to Donaldson’s neighborhood, she saw Allison running along South Avenue with one hand clutching her phone and the other hand holding up her pants. “She got in the car and she just kept rocking back and forth and just crying, frantically….And then she said, ‘Beau raped me.’ ”

Beth Huguet testified that Allison asked her not to share that information with anybody. “You didn’t share it with Allison’s father?” Van Valkenburg asked.

“I shared it with no one,” Beth said. “It wasn’t my right. It was my child’s right. She was an adult….I needed to protect her wishes.” During the months that followed, Beth said her home “became almost like a tomb” from Allison’s “crying and walking in the middle of the night, and sobbing….It was five months of complete, sheer hell, to say the least, to watch her go so far within herself. The raw pain, the internal raw pain that was there every day—and I could see it in her eyes—was horrific, to the point where I could barely function, to get up every day and go to school and teach and keep a smile on my face when I had a child that was suffering so horrifically.”

Allison “wasn’t the same person anymore,” Beth continued. “There was no smiles. There was no laughs….She went back to school [in Oregon] in January. But I would frequently get calls from her, about every other day, where she was having trouble focusing on school….At least she was out of Missoula and the people there didn’t know. But internally, she was being eaten alive….She had a lot of fear and anxiety.”

Beth Huguet told the court about Allison’s visit to Missoula during Eastern Oregon University’s Thanksgiving break in November 2011. It was an especially awkward visit, Beth said, because she and Allison were trying to keep the rape secret from her sisters and father so they wouldn’t have to endure the anguish Beth and Allison were feeling. To that end, Beth explained, every day she and Allison had to “put a brave face on.” Then Allison went downtown with her friends one night and ran into Beau Donaldson at the Mo Club. “I think that’s when it hit her full force…how deep-seated her pain and fear was,” Beth testified, “and that she really wasn’t living. She was just managing day to day, getting up and putting one foot in front of the other.”

Van Valkenburg asked Beth if she thought Donaldson had “done a good job…of telling his family and his friends exactly what he did to Allison.”

“No,” she replied, pointing out that even after confessing twice to the police that he raped Allison, “he chose to let his family and friends believe that he didn’t do it. And that’s not a person standing up for what’s right.

“Beau has been put on a pedestal most of his life,” Beth continued, suggesting that his many admirers “wanted to believe he didn’t do it, and he chose to allow them to believe he didn’t do it.”

When defense counsel Milt Datsopoulos was given the opportunity to cross-examine Beth Huguet, he tried to elicit testimony from her that Beau Donaldson had been an exemplary friend to Allison as they grew up together. At one point Datsopoulos asked Beth if there was anything she’d observed in Donaldson over the many years she had known him to suggest “he might have some kind of violent or mean streak.”

“He didn’t do anything to me or my child,” Beth conceded. But, she said a moment later, “I guess that’s what makes this even more horrific, is that this is such an extreme betrayal between friends.”

Datsopoulos kept pushing Beth to take Beau Donaldson’s entire life into consideration, rather than just a single, inexplicable act. “When you measure people’s lives, who they are,” Datsopoulos pointed out, “you have to look at the entire spectrum of that life, not a narrow piece of it—wouldn’t you say that’s an accurate premise?”

“Yes,” Beth Huguet replied. But then she pointed out that there are sides to people that are impossible for even family members and close friends to know. “I think Beau’s sexual deviancy is a side that many of us were not aware of.”

      W
hen Beth Huguet finished her testimony, prosecutor Fred Van Valkenburg called Allison Huguet to the witness stand. As one of his first questions, he asked if she had ever had a romantic or sexual relationship with Beau Donaldson. “No,” Allison replied. “But Beau and I were closer than I was to any other guy growing up…and had a lot of respect for each other, I thought.”

Referring to the night Huguet was raped, Van Valkenburg asked, “Do you know where Beau Donaldson was at the time you decided to go to sleep?”

“No,” she said.

“What’s the next thing you remember happening, Allison?”

“I remember waking up to Beau moaning and a lot of pressure and pain,” she answered. She was facedown on the couch, with her pants pulled down, and Beau was penetrating her from behind.

“Were you scared?” Van Valkenburg asked.

“Yeah,” she replied. “I mean, he’s got at least a hundred pounds on me. If he’s willing to do that while I’m sleeping, I definitely thought he would have done a lot more to keep me from resisting, or telling somebody….So I pretended like I didn’t wake up.” Allison described waiting until Donaldson had finished raping her and left the room, then grabbing her phone, bolting from the house, and being chased barefoot down the alley by Donaldson until she saw her mother’s car. She told the court about driving back to Donaldson’s house to rescue her friend Keely Williams, and being examined at the hospital. Because Donaldson hadn’t used a condom, she testified, she worried
that she might become pregnant with his child or have contracted “multiple STDs, including HIV.”

Van Valkenburg asked Huguet how she was affected by encountering Beau Donaldson at the Mo Club in November 2011.

“At that moment,” Huguet said, “it hit me that…as hard as I tried to separate the person who raped me and the person I grew up with, I had to realize that they were the same person, and…he was not sorry. He was not sorry in any way….When Beau stood there and laughed in my face, I think I was forced to realize that by not going to the police, I was allowing him to think that this was okay, and I was giving him the opportunity to do this to other females. And I can be honest with you in saying that if I had found out that some girl was going through this hell because I didn’t say anything, I probably would have killed myself. There is no way I could have lived with that, at all.”

“What’s this last year been like for you?” Van Valkenburg asked.

“It has been hell,” Huguet said. “It was very obvious that Beau had not told his family or friends [the truth], as they went around this town saying horrible things about me, saying that I had made this all up.”

“What do you think should happen to Beau?” Van Valkenburg asked.

She had been struggling to answer that question, Huguet replied, explaining that he was “someone that I cared about, I truly loved, and he’s the person that raped me. I believe that if I didn’t know Beau, if Beau was a complete stranger, I would ask for you to have him sent to prison for the rest of his life. But, unfortunately, I can’t take away the fact that I care about him. I want him to get help. I want him to be the person that I grew up with.”

Beau Donaldson had received many accolades when he was younger, Huguet acknowledged, and deserved the love he’d received from all the people who admired him. “I loved that person, too,” she lamented. “But I don’t think that person is sitting right there.” Huguet gestured toward Donaldson, who hunched impassively at the defense counsel’s table. “I don’t think that’s the same person at all,” she said. “I don’t think he’s taken responsibility, and I think the only way he’s going to get it is if he has to sit in prison.”

Looking at Donaldson with a conflicted expression that conveyed both sincere concern and utter revulsion, Huguet said to him, “And honestly, I think…you deserve to be raped every day until you understand the pain you have caused me, until you understand what this does to you emotionally—until you get it, Beau. Until you are actually sorry. Until you can take responsibility and get help….And I truly hope that you can come out of this a person of quality, a person of substance. I hope after you are punished, and after you get it, that you have a great life….Until then, I don’t care what happens to you.”

TAKING THE WITNESS
stand was difficult for Allison Huguet. She knew most of the people in the gallery, and many of them were attending the hearing to offer her moral support. But at least as many people were openly supporting Beau Donaldson, including several individuals she’d previously considered friends of her family. Seeing them sitting on Donaldson’s side of the courtroom was exceedingly hurtful, and she had trouble controlling her emotions as she testified. Several times Huguet had to fight back tears, and it looked like she might not be able to proceed. On each occasion, however, she willed herself to regain her composure, and continued to speak her piece. It was a remarkable display of courage.

Huguet is a warm, cheerful woman. She doesn’t look fierce, but her upbeat demeanor that day hid an abundance of tenacity. When defense counsel Milt Datsopoulos began his cross-examination of Huguet, he had no idea what was in store for him.

Datsopoulos began not by asking Huguet a question but by lecturing her. “I just want to explain to you,” he pronounced, “why certain things happened. Beau admitted on at least three different occasions…that he took advantage of you—that he had sex with you without consent….He said he was guilty of doing things to you without your consent that were horrible….I think it’s important for you to know that he has consistently told various people—but most importantly, law enforcement—‘I made a horrible mistake. I committed a crime. I had sex with my friend. She did not give consent.’ Charges were then filed….And we came to court and pled ‘not
guilty’ [at Donaldson’s arraignment]. That outrages a lot of people. It’s hard to understand how that occurs when you’ve already admitted your guilt, like Beau did.” Datsopoulos explained to Allison that when Donaldson made the “not guilty” plea at his arraignment, he wasn’t actually claiming that he wasn’t guilty. It was merely a procedural formality.

“I understand that,” Huguet replied.

“I just hope that makes you feel a little better,” Datsopoulos offered.

“No, it doesn’t make me feel better,” she said. “What would make me feel better is if he told his family and friends the truth, so that they don’t go around bashing on me and attacking me….You know, that would make me feel better.”

Trying a different tack, Datsopoulos said, “The thing that I was pleased to hear was that you’re not here to destroy Beau.” Datsopoulos pointed out that Huguet said that she wanted Beau Donaldson to acknowledge the harm he did to her and her family and that “he needs professional help; and that you want him to get that professional help.”

“In Deer Lodge,” Huguet interjected, referring to the state prison.

“And you also want him to be able to recover and become somebody,” Datsopoulos suggested hopefully. “He’s got a good mind, doesn’t he?”

“He’s got a sick mind,” Huguet countered. “I don’t know what happened to Beau, to be honest to you. Like I said, I don’t know that person sitting there.” She gestured again at Donaldson. “I knew the person I was growing up with. I loved that person. But I am not willing to speak…about his character now or in the future, because I don’t know this person.”

Milt Datsopoulos tried to get Huguet to acknowledge that Beau Donaldson would benefit from psychiatric counseling. She concurred, then added, “I’m requesting that he be sent to prison, too. I definitely think he needs to be punished, as well.”

“I agree that he needs to be punished,” Datsopoulos said. “But there are various forms of punishment.” Donaldson, he insisted, “is remorseful. He’s going through a lot of pain. Yeah, he’s scared. He’s
sad that he’s in this situation. But he’s also agonizing over the damage he’s done to you.”

“We have differing opinions on that,” Allison Huguet declared.

THE FINAL
witness to appear for the prosecution was Katie Burton, the probation and parole officer who’d written the presentence investigation report about Beau Donaldson, which urged Judge Townsend to follow the state’s recommendation and sentence him to thirty years at Deer Lodge, with twenty years suspended. Prosecutor Fred Van Valkenburg began by asking why Burton thought her recommendation was “the appropriate sentence that should be imposed,” given the wide range of potential sentences Townsend was free to choose, from no incarceration at all to one hundred years of hard time.

“I think there needs to be some punishment,” Burton answered. “To take advantage of someone when they are sleeping, to take away their feeling of safety around other people, it’s heinous. I mean, it’s a horrible thing to have that person ever feel that they can’t feel safe around other people. I think that the Montana State Prison is appropriate, given that this was an adult taking advantage of an adult [who] had been friends with him for years and years and years.” Katie Burton added that Donaldson needed treatment for his substance abuse and sexual deviancy. “I think rehabilitation is very important,” she said, “but I think that he needs to do some of it at the Montana State Prison and recognize how horrible his actions really are.”

Van Valkenburg asked, “You understand, Katie, that if he were to get a ten-year prison sentence, that he would be eligible for parole after serving…two and a half years of that sentence?”

“That’s correct,” she said. “Yes.”

“So basically, if he does what he’s required to do while he’s in prison, he’s likely to get paroled?”

“That would be my guess,” Burton replied, “as long as he completes treatment.” She recommended to Judge Townsend that Donaldson be required to complete both chemical-dependency treatment and sex-offender treatment while incarcerated at the Montana State Prison before he was deemed eligible for parole.

Because this was a sentencing hearing, rather than a trial, Judge Townsend was free to question witnesses, and she wasn’t shy about doing so. “One of the matters that has been discussed in this case,” she said, “or at least bandied about, is whether or not Mr. Donaldson should be considered for the Boot Camp Program.” She was referring to a 120-day, military-style boot camp at the Treasure State Correctional Training Center; this had been suggested by Milt Datsopoulos as an alternative to incarceration in the state prison. “Do you have any opinion about that as a potential proposal?” Townsend asked Katie Burton.

“I think the Boot Camp is a great program,” Burton replied. “It’s probably one of my favorites….The only problem I find with the Boot Camp…is they don’t do sex-offender treatment in there.”

“So he could not, in fact, get the sex-offender treatment that you’re recommending…if he were a Boot Camp inmate?”

“No,” Burton answered, “he would not.”