Jury still out in American Fork sex case

AMERICAN FORK — After nearly eight hours of deliberating, an eight-member jury retired for the night without a verdict in the case of Grant Joel Hildreth, an American Fork chiropractor charged with six felonies for allegedly sexually touching four of his female patients during routine chiropractic procedures.

During closing arguments in 4th District Court in American Fork on Monday, prosecutor Alex Ludlow spent more than two hours going over the weeklong case for the jury — reviewing testimony from the four alleged victims, then attacking the defense's case, witness by witness.

He called the defense tactics "red herrings," and a "shotgun approach" and questioned the various references to Hildreth's children and his family's participation in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. One of Hildreth's first comments on the stand was that he has a son on an LDS mission.

"The defense wants you to look at everything but what the issue is, the issue is, 'Did Grant Hildreth do these things?"' Ludlow said. He told the jury to carefully consider each of the four victims, who gained nothing from coming forward with the sexual abuse allegations.

"If you believe these four women, you cannot believe what has been presented to you by the defense," Ludlow said. "He is trying to shroud within his chiropractic skills and his practice, a crime."

However, defense attorney Carolyn Howard took only 20 minutes to present a different picture to the jury.

She asked them to consider the criminal code — the state had to prove that Hildreth intended to not only cause emotional or bodily harm but sexually arouse himself or the patients — neither of which he did, Howard argued.

She referred to one alleged victim who, on her intake form, wrote large X's on top of her breast area, indicating that her chest was troubling her — although she later claimed Hildreth had inappropriately touched her breasts.

"(The woman) said she admitted, she actually appreciated Dr. Hildreth's examinations," Howard said, adding that the woman had also referred her husband and grandparents to Hildreth. "Clearly in this case it was consensual by (her) own writing on her intake form."

Other women complained that their gowns had slipped or fallen, leaving them naked and exposed.

"It could have been bad bedside manner," Howard said. "In the 9,000 office visits, he's not always watching if the gowns are falling. If that happened, so be it, but it doesn't make Dr. Hildreth a criminal."