At the end of the trial, the Bay Area lawyer accused of child sexual abuse is portrayed through very different eyes

Is former Vacaville attorney James Glenn Haskell a monster who “dehumanized” three of his four adopted children, sexually abused the eldest girl, and injured and humiliated the two younger ones?

Or is he the wrongly accused, almost saintly father described in numerous “character letters,” who tried to give his children a good life but is now the victim of “fantastic,” unreliable witness statements?

After a nine-week trial in Solano County Superior Court, the 12 jurors will give their answers Tuesday when the case is presented to them following the conclusion of closing arguments from the defense and the prosecutor’s rebuttal.

Haskell is accused of 17 counts, misdemeanors and felonies, including sexual assault, that allegedly occurred between October 2018 and February 2022, when his four adopted children, three girls and a boy, were taken from his Vacaville home.

In addition, the charges later filed in September 2022 included four counts of sexual penetration with a foreign object while the victim, the eldest of three daughters, was unaware of it. Other charges include two counts of assault on a child. (The reporter does not typically identify victims of sexual abuse or sexual assault.)

Haskell, 42, who was released on bail, pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Assistant District Attorney Shelly Moore began her closing argument by saying, “Closing arguments are not evidence,” and then called Haskell “the father of the year.” She described him as an articulate attorney and reminded jurors that he was a member of the Vacaville Rotary Club and a former bishop of a Mormon congregation in Vacaville, suggesting he was an above-the-record member of the Vacaville community.

However, she added that when he took the stand in his own defense, he was also someone who made self-serving, “unsubstantiated statements.”

Moore, in a calm and deliberate pace, asked the jury to apply the law in considering the facts of the case. She then defined “reasonable doubt” and said they did not have to “eliminate all possible doubts.”

She asked them to consider sources of evidence, including witness statements, audio recordings and photographs.

Moore then detailed the charges – two counts of sexual penetration of an unconscious (or sleeping) person “who could not defend himself because he was unconscious,” and sexual penetration of a minor under the age of 16 and a minor under the age of 18. He is also charged with several counts of assault and willful child abuse, and four counts of lewd and lascivious acts upon a child under the age of 14.

The assault charges include choking the second eldest daughter and son and “slamming a child’s head against a hard surface” on purpose. Moore added, however, that “no assault is required” for the charge.

She reported several days of testimony, including some of the children describing being forced to sleep on the cold bathroom floor as punishment. They also described being severely beaten with a belt and being pushed either onto the sidewalk of the driveway or onto the floor of their house.

Moore said the sexual touching and assault on the oldest girl “continued for two years,” and the injuries to the second oldest girl and second oldest boy did not stop until the abuse was reported to Solano County Sheriff’s Office officials on Feb. 3, 2022. A Solano County Child Protective Services worker concluded the children were not safe and moved them to another shelter that same day.

About four weeks later, Moore reminded jurors, the eldest girl confided to a family friend that she had been sexually abused while sleeping on a family couch. The family friend then reported the allegations to a sheriff’s detective.

“One person’s testimony can prove any fact,” Moore told jurors.

When asked whether a child could not remember precise details of an alleged crime or offense or made contradictory statements, she said that jurors could accept “any parts that are credible.”

Moore reminded jurors of testimony that said Haskell “chased” the boy around the house with a belt, hitting him in the face in a beating that left him so badly injured that he missed school. There were also details of Haskell allegedly pulling the boy’s hair and choking him. These are statements a child could not make up, she said.

Haskell’s method of punishment was to “isolate and belittle” the boy and the second oldest girl. “Power and control” are not normal parenting, Moore claimed.

As she spoke, Haskell, wearing a light gray sweater, shirt and tie over dark pants, listened sternly and took notes while sitting next to his attorney, well-known Fairfield criminal defense attorney Thomas Maas.

Perhaps the most shocking part of Moore’s argument was that she showed color photographs of the boy’s bruised buttocks after the belt beating, another photo of more than half a dozen bruises on his back, some old and yellowed, others freshly pink, and yet another photo showing a thin bruise about six feet long on one leg.

At one point, Maas objected, claiming that Moore had misrepresented the law, but Judge Janice M. Williams told him he could make his case in his closing argument.

Moore called Haskell’s claim on the witness stand that the boy and the second eldest daughter had engaged in “self-harm,” meaning that they had inflicted some of the injuries they sustained on themselves, a “fanciful statement.”

Haskell’s “apologies” were “not credible,” she said, adding that his behavior had “dehumanized” the children. Some of them had testified that he had punished them in “moments of anger and rage.”