Accused molester’s
case goes to jury

---

By Leila Fujimori
lfujimori@starbulletin.com

A Circuit Court jury will continue deliberations today in the case of a 36-year-old former school counselor, charged with sexually assaulting two Mililani Middle School students.

In closing arguments yesterday, Deputy Prosecutor Thalia Murphy encouraged jurors to believe a 14-year-old girl who said Allan P. Sagayaga hugged and kissed her and touched her breast on March 15, 2001, and another 14-year-old girl who said he hugged and kissed her and touched her buttock in February 2001.

Murphy said it would be "so easy to write off" the girl, who alleges her school counselor fondled her because she is a runaway, truant and failed the seventh grade. But that would make her the perfect victim, she said.

Sagayaga, who is charged with two counts of third-degree sexual assault, denied the allegations, saying one of the girls initiated the kiss but he pushed her away and reprimanded her.

Sagayaga's attorney, Keith Shigetomi, said both girls are lying. He said the allegations of the two girls, who are friends, sound too much alike.

Shigetomi said the girl alleging the March incident told her friends not to say anything because she was afraid of "getting busted," but was surprised when her friends reported the incident.

"She told her friends something that never happened," he said. "When her friends told on her, she couldn't take it back. If she admitted the story was false, she was afraid of getting into trouble with family court," he said.

He said the second girl felt betrayed by Sagayaga for divulging "personal issues."

Murphy asked jurors why the girls would lie about being sexually abused when they would have to repeat the story and suffer embarrassment and pain.