Woman Denies Engaging in Sex Acts With Teen

Appearing exhausted and speaking in a numbing monotone, Gloria (Gigi) Goldman took the stand Tuesday in Ventura County Superior Court to defend herself against 32 charges of engaging in sex acts with a teen-age boy.

“These were stories, they didn’t happen,” said Goldman, 37, the mother of two young daughters. Her lawyer has portrayed her accuser as a lying braggart with a troubled past.

The prosecution contends that the former elementary school teacher seduced teen-age boys at her Thousand Oaks home, describing allegations of group sex, oral sex, nude bathing and other risque sexual acts.

The youth, now a 19-year-old Navy seaman, testified Friday that Goldman seduced him when he was 15 and that the affair lasted about three years, beginning in 1991. The teen-ager’s younger brother testified last week that he saw them engage in a sex act.

The alleged affair came to light when the teen-ager told a religious adviser about it in February, 1994. Neither the youth nor his family were present Tuesday during Goldman’s testimony.

The defense maintains that the youth is mired in lies of bravado, that his brother may have imagined seeing them engage in sex, and that the youth’s mother fueled her son’s bogus allegations because she held a grudge against her former close friend and neighbor Goldman.

Goldman testified she knew the youth had a crush on her and wanted to have sex with her, but that she firmly declined and said “it could never be.”

She also contended that a suggestive phone conversation between her and the youth, taped by sheriff’s deputies, is not what it seems.

In the April, 1994, phone call, Goldman urges the youth not to testify against her and the teen-ager speaks of missing their intimacy.

At one point in a transcript of the call, the youth says, “I had it for so long. I wake up and like, I’ll be dreaming about it in the shower . . . It like sucks. It like grips me. Does that happen to you?”

Responds Goldman: “You know I always cared about you and loved you.”

In another segment of the transcript, Goldman recommends that the youth refuse to testify: “You will not say anything. You don’t have to say anything. You will not testify. You don’t have to testify.”

Goldman spent much of the day in a line-by-line rebuttal of the phone call.

She said she told her teen-age accuser to plead the Fifth Amendment because it appeared he was more concerned about looking like a liar than admitting his stories were “fabrications.”

“I tried to convince him to tell the truth,” Goldman testified.

Asked if it was odd that the youth spoke to Goldman about dreaming in the shower, she responded that she thought the boy was talking about “sex in general.”

Goldman admitted she and the teen-ager were very close.

She explained menstruation to him, and advised him how to kiss. “I told him not to let his lips be all tense, but to relax them,” she said.

And it was not unusual for the boy to use her hot tub--possibly without a bathing suit, she said--or to be alone in her bedroom wearing just a towel. And she admitted that she was, in at least one instance, partially nude in his presence, covering her bare chest with a sweat shirt.

Goldman denied the youth’s testimony that they had taken showers together and had sex on a ski lift, at Disneyland and on a houseboat. She also denied that the teen-ager had made a nude tape of himself for her or together watched a video she owned named “Passage to Ecstasy.”

Ex-husband Don Goldman took the stand earlier and said he did not believe the youth’s allegations either.

Prosecutor Mark Pachowitz questioned Gloria Goldman briefly in the late afternoon. Testimony will continue today with Goldman on the stand.