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Arielle Beck
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By Dennis Romboy and Lucinda Dillon
Kinkead
Deseret Morning News
Published: Tuesday, April 25, 2006 12:36 a.m. MDT
MOAB — Kelly Sowell hated summers. She couldn't wait for them to end
so she could go back to school. In the summer of 2002, the 14-year-old
joined a girls softball team to keep herself busy. It was a decision
that robbed her of her innocence and ultimately, her mom says, her
life.
Arielle Beck had built up a stellar reputation while an athlete at
Grand County High School. She still holds several Utah girls high
school basketball scoring records. She made the Deseret News all-state
team in both basketball and softball in 1997. She was popular and
well-liked. After college, she returned to Moab to become a teacher
and coach.
Her softball players knew her as Fuzzy, and Kelly was on her team.
Kelly and Fuzzy hit it off that summer. Kelly wanted a big sister and
Fuzzy wanted a little sister. But it wasn't long before the
relationship took a sordid turn.
Fuzzy assured her catcher the kissing and sexual contact was OK. "Even
your mother did this only she doesn't talk about it," she told the
naive teen. Kelly didn't talk about it either.
Nothing during that season threw up red flags for Sherilyn and Mike
Sowell, though they found Beck's nickname inappropriate for someone
who wanted to be a schoolteacher.
But as summer closed and the school year approached, Sherilyn began to
suspect something was going on between Fuzzy and her daughter. The
coach called and sent e-mails. Kelly went places with her. She had a
newfound interest in basketball and football.
When Kelly returned to school, Beck volunteered as a teaching
assistant in her English class. Kelly's midterm grades were poor,
except in English.
"I thought she was getting kids into drugs, not sex. I really didn't
think about that," Sherilyn Sowell said.
Sherilyn Sowell found a couple of e-mails Beck wrote to Kelly. She
showed them to a friend at the state Division of Child and Family
Services, who called them "grooming letters" for a relationship.
The Sowells took another two-page handwritten letter to the police.
After reading it, Moab Police Chief Dave Navarre said, "That's a damn
love letter." Police opened an investigation of Beck.
Kelly initially refused to cooperate. "Mom, if I tell, I'll get
someone in a lot of trouble," she said. It took what Sherilyn called a
bit of divine intervention to get her daughter to talk with police.
The family went to nearby Monticello to attend the opening of a new
LDS temple. With light streaming through the window, a piece of paper
fluttered from a hymnal Kelly was thumbing through. In what looked
like a child's scrawl someone had written: "Tell the truth."
Sobbing hysterically, Kelly bolted from the building to call police
then and there. Shortly thereafter, Kelly had the first of eight
interviews with Moab police detective Eddie Guerrero.
Police eventually arrested Beck. The Grand County attorney's office
charged her with multiple sex crimes. Kelly testified at the trial.
Students and teachers reported seeing Beck and the girl together
during lunch breaks and at football games.
Several of Kelly's friends testified to seeing Beck and the girl
"making out" in the back of a vehicle on canyon outings. Incidents of
other sex acts emerged. A friend testified that Beck offered her
alcohol on two occasions.
A jury found Beck guilty of three second-degree counts of forcible
sexual abuse in September 2003, and a judge sentenced her to three
consecutive terms of one to 15 years in prison. She was also given one
year in jail for each additional misdemeanor count of stalking and
giving alcohol to a minor.
Beck's imprisonment did not end Kelly's ordeal, and Sherilyn Sowell
places the blame "100 percent" on Beck. In the two years following the
trial Kelly spiraled downward. She tried to kill herself several times
as her parents scrambled for mental health help.
After the sixth attempt, Utah Valley Regional Medical Center admitted
her to the psychiatric unit for 13 days. Psychiatrists diagnosed post
traumatic stress disorder and depression. For the next year, Kelly
underwent treatment in Salt Lake City, Denver and Moab. Therapy ended
in February 2005 after the counseling center changed its billing
process so patients had to pay up front. The Sowells could not afford
the $126 for each session.
Meanwhile, Kelly was finding it increasingly difficult to endure.
The Beck case sorely divided Moab. Some residents didn't believe
Kelly; they took Beck's side. The Sowells lost friends over it. A
handful of students and even adults around town harassed her
mercilessly.
They called her names, and someone "keyed," or scratched, her car.
Someone beat her up at school.
She continued to be depressed and traumatized. Her family tried to
keep a close eye on her. Kelly told her parents she could not live
with everyone thinking she was gay.
The Sowell family filed a lawsuit against Grand County School District
and principal Tom Brown on the premise that the school failed to
protect Kelly's civil rights. According to the lawsuit, the school had
reports from students and teachers about Beck's inappropriate behavior
but did not tell parents, the state Division of Child and Family
Services or the police.
Kelly knew the lawsuit was pending, and when things got bad at school,
her mother told her the settlement might be a way out of Moab.
Kelly's senior year of high school started well, though the harassment
continued. Mike and Sherilyn Sowell asked her to hold on until
graduation. Kelly had a boyfriend. She was in love, her mother said,
and planning to get married.
In late October 2005, the Sowells saw a flicker of the old Kelly, the
"happy-go-lucky nut" they had once known. "She was like a whole new
girl," Mike Sowell said.
But shortly before she died, she'd been hassled by a couple of girls
at school. Kelly cried with her mother and asked when the comments and
criticisms would stop. "I told her, 'Probably never, until you get out
of Moab.'" She could use the money from the lawsuit, her mother told
the girl.
"But she just couldn't wait" her mom said.
The family settled the lawsuit in March — four months after Kelly
died.
On Nov. 11, a Friday night, Kelly's boyfriend dropped her off at home
early. She was irritated. But she and her mother didn't talk much,
except to mention a relative's upcoming baby shower.
Kelly went to her bedroom about 9 p.m. About an hour later, Sherilyn
went into the room looking for a laundry basket she had asked Kelly to
bring out earlier. She spotted the basket, and then saw her daughter
sitting in the closet, her long hair hanging over her face.
Sherilyn screamed her name.
"Our daughter's dead," she yelled to Mike in the other room. "I think
our daughter's dead."
"My God, she's hung herself," Mike gasped. A dog leash was wrapped
around her neck.
They called 911 and did CPR until paramedics arrived.
The scene seemed like a dream to Sherilyn.
"I just wanted to run because in a dream if you run, you wake up. I
just wanted to run. I didn't care where. I just wanted to wake up."
Kelly did not leave a note. "All we have is questions, blame,"
Sherilyn said.
In a community plagued with other recent teenage suicides, a year of
relative quiet had preceded Kelly Sowell's death.
Early the next Saturday morning, school officials worked furiously to
figure out how to notify staff and students.
Coincidentally, Grand County High School had made it to the 2A state
football championships and was headed for the big game in Cedar City
that day. It fell to school guidance counselor Peggy Nissen to inform
students on each of three buses headed there that their senior friend
had taken her own life.
Nissen prayed throughout the game that her team would win. It seemed
silly to her to ask for divine intervention in a football game, but
she figured the student body needed something to celebrate. Grand
County did win the game on that bittersweet day for the community.
"She was my baby," soft-spoken Mike Sowell said a few weeks ago.
Five months later, the lawsuit has done little to pay the Sowells back
for what they see as the death of their daughter.
"In my opinion Kelly was a hero," Sherilyn Sowell said. "She saved a
lot of kids from this person."
Yet so much guilt remains.
Kelly enjoyed writing poetry, and she wanted her mother to read one of
her poems the week before she died. But Sherilyn Sowell was busy and
asked if she could read it later.
"If I would have read that I would have known she was hurting," she
said. "I found it afterward. I cried and cried and couldn't stop
crying."
It was titled "Hidden Tears."
"I am sick of being hurt and hiding it, so I will save myself from
being lost in this dark place," Kelly wrote in the poem. "I have
hidden for so long and will no longer have the fear of being
overwhelmed with all these hidden tears."
Moab Teacher Appeals Sex Abuse Case
March 27th, 2006 @ 11:55am
Gene Kennedy reporting
A Moab teacher convicted of sexually abusing a 14 year-old student
wants a new trial. Today, her case went before the Utah Court of
Appeals.
A jury sent Arielle Beck to prison for having a sexual relationship
with a girl she taught and coached on a softball league. Teachers and
students complained about the relationship. The victim's mom even
found love letters from the teacher. When the case went to trial, the
14 year-old girl committed suicide.
Sherilyn Sowell / Victim's Mother: "My daughter died waiting for
Arielle to say she was sorry...and she never got that."
Sherilyn Sowell doesn't want to see the teacher, Arielle Beck, get a
new trial.
Beck claims the judge in the case was biased. Her lawyer argued in
court today that the judge crossed-examined witnesses inappropriately,
asking questions the prosecutor should have.
Sherilyn Sowell / Victim's Mother: "I think Judge Anderson was trying
to get the truth... That was my daughter who was the victim and I knew
the truth and nothing but the truth."
Karen Klucznik / Asst. Attorney Gen.: "This was not a case where the
evidence was scarce...it would be a shame if there was a new trial."
Eyewitness News tried to get fair comment from Arielle Beck's
attorney. He decided to pass.
The three judge panel at the Court of Appeals now has to make its'
decision: Is there enough bias in the case to warrant a new trial?
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