By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — The state Court of Appeals on Wednesday upheld the sexual-assault conviction of a Greene County woman who was videotaped having sex with a teenager.
Monica Ann Cluck, now 27, was convicted in Greene County Circuit Court in June 2008 of two counts of first-degree sexual assault and one count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. She was sentenced to eight years in prison and fined $750.
Prosecutors said Cluck had sex with two male juveniles, both of whom had been members of the Singing Hands group Cluck led at the First Baptist Church of Marmaduke. Cluck also gave alcohol to one of the teens, prosecutors said.
At Cluck’s trial, her ex-husband testified that he suspected his wife was having an affair, so he set up a camera to record video in their home while he was out of town for a weekend in August 2007. He later gave authorities the video, which showed Cluck and a juvenile male drinking alcohol and having sex.
A sheriff’s deputy testified that he went to Cluck’s home on Aug. 7, 2007, and told her she was under arrest for having sex with a minor, and Cluck asked, “Which one?”
On appeal, Cluck argued that her question to the deputy should not have been introduced as evidence at her trial because it was coerced from her in the context of a police interrogation. In its opinion Wednesday, the Court of Appeals disagreed.
“The state argues, and we agree, that there is not any evidence showing that her admission was prompted by a purposeful police inquiry or that it was the product of duress,” Judge Robert Gladwin wrote.
Cluck also argued that she was not in a position of trust or authority over the teens, as the state claimed, because the teens were no longer members of the Singing Hands group when she had sex with them.
The Court of Appeals noted that during Cluck’s trial, the mother of one of the boys testified that she took her son out of the singing group in April 2007, after she found inappropriate text messages from Cluck on her son’s phone. The boy also took the stand and testified that he had sex with Cluck 15 or 20 times.
The other boy initially told police his sexual relationship with Cluck began in March 2007, while he was in the singing group, but he testified during the trial that the relationship began in July 2007, after the singing group disbanded.
“The state presented substantial evidence that Cluck had long-standing relationships with the two victims as their mentor and chaperone at the time of the offenses,” Gladwin wrote in the court’s opinion.
The court also rejected an argument by Cluck that jurors should not have been told she was a kindergarten teacher, as that fact was irrelevant. Even if the evidence was irrelevant, “any error was harmless in that her guilt was established by overwhelming evidence,” Gladwin wrote.
