UTAH
The Salt Lake Tribune
By Marissa Lang | The Salt Lake Tribune
First Published May 23 2014
For two years, Efrey Guzman stood firm in the face of lurid and bizarre accusations.
When prosecutors said the former LDS branch president assaulted a teen girl in her Millcreek home, he denied it. When they said he attacked a mother, he insisted he had not. When they said he bit the penis of a young man so severely that the man required reparative surgery, he swore his innocence.
On Friday, Guzman left the courthouse a free man.
An eight-person jury acquitted the 48-year-old man of all charges: aggravated sexual assault and aggravated burglary, both first-degree felonies, and sex abuse of a child and forcible sexual abuse, second-degree felonies.
“He’s a good man, a church man, and he was accused of a very awful, awful crime of which he was innocent,” said Guzman’s defense attorney Bel-Ami De Montreux. “He simply was not there. He has an alibi.”
In the course of Guzman’s five-day trial, prosecutors accused the man of groping a 13-year-old girl in May 2012, then returning for her three months later, crazed with desire.
They said he burst through the front door, shouting for the 13-year-old girl, pushed the mother to the floor, ripped her shirt, grabbed her breast and choked her as he attempted to undo his pants.
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