Jimmy Dutra takes stand to deny sex-abuse allegations in first day of trial

An attorney representing Jimmy Dutra suggested on Monday that allegations the Watsonville city councilmember molested a child two decades ago were driven by a dispute over the estate of Dutra’s father and designed to undermine his candidacy for county supervisor two years ago.

“It is an unfortunate fact in this country that the fastest and most effective way to destroy an openly gay man is to call him a pedophile,” attorney Christopher Panetta said on the opening day of a civil sex-abuse trial in Santa Cruz County Superior Court.

Dutra took the stand to dispute some of the details cited in the suit against him and to paint a picture of an inheritance dispute with his late father’s partner that he alleges fueled the allegations.

Dutra is in the midst of a campaign for reelection to the Watsonville City Council this November. He lost a race for District 4 county supervisor to Felipe Hernandez in 2022 after a former family friend, Stephen Siefke, accused him of sexual abuse in 2005, when Siefke was 12 years old. 

Siefke’s suit claims Dutra’s parents took Siefke on a vacation to Los Angeles. The complaint alleges that Dutra, then 30 and living in Los Angeles, molested Siefke on one of the evenings of the trip. Dutra has consistently denied the allegations. The complaint seeks “damages in an amount to be determined at trial.” Judge Timothy Schmal is presiding over the case.

Dutra represents District 6 on the city council and served as Watsonville’s mayor in 2021. He previously served a city council term from 2014 to 2018. He is being challenged this year by Trina Coffman-Gomez, a mortgage broker and former Watsonville city councilmember. The District 6 election is the only contested city council race in Watsonville.

In his opening statement, Dana Scruggs, Siefke’s attorney, said that the case is about “responsibility and accountability.” He said that Siefke was motivated not by Dutra’s campaign for county supervisor, but because he learned that Dutra was working with children through Pajaro Valley Unified School District. 

Scruggs said the Siefke and Dutra families both worked in the agricultural business in South County and were close. He pointed out that Siefke’s grandfather and Jimmy Dutra’s father bought houses in the same neighborhood in Hawaii in the early 2000s. Dutra’s father’s partner, Susie McBride, became very close with Siefke and viewed him as “the son she never had,” Scruggs said, while Siefke viewed McBride as his second mother. McBride died in 2023.

Dutra’s attorney, Panetta, said that while he could not say what Siefke’s motive is for making the allegations, evidence points back to McBride and fallout from a lawsuit involving Dutra’s father’s estate after he died. In court Monday, Panetta displayed texts between McBride and Siefke, showing what appeared to be McBride urging Siefke to file the sexual abuse lawsuit in order to hurt Dutra’s chances of winning the 2022 supervisor election. 

Scruggs said Monday that Siefke struggled with behavioral issues following the 2005 incident, including marijuana use, alcohol use and eventually an arrest in 2010. After this, Scruggs said, he told his parents of the incident, which significantly strained the long-standing friendship between the two families. 

Scruggs told jurors they would hear from friends, family and health care professionals over the course of the trial about how Siefke told them of the incident many years before he filed the complaint in 2022. Scruggs told the jury that Dutra’s defense would claim that political opponents manipulated Siefke into moving forward with the suit, but that it isn’t the jurors’ responsibility isn’t to figure that out.

“After Judge Schmal has read to you the instructions, and you’re all back in that room deliberating, I believe there are two questions that you have to answer,” Scruggs said. “What did Jimmy do, and what are we going to do about it?”

Panetta told jurors that Dutra is not a pedophile, and that outside of this instance has never been accused of molestation or inappropriate conduct around children. He also said that while Dutra knew of the Siefke family, he was not friends with them. Panetta said that it’s true that Siefke stayed at Dutra’s house in Los Angeles at the time of the alleged incident, but that was the only time they had met.

“I don’t know Mr. Siefke’s motive for filing this case, but the evidence shows that there was a motive to damage Mr. Dutra’s reputation and his chances of being elected,” he said.

Scruggs called Dutra to the stand first to cross-examine him on some of the information that each attorney mentioned in their opening statements. Dutra confirmed that the families were close and had houses near each other in Hawaii, but reaffirmed that he did not know them or Stephen Siefke well, if at all. He also confirmed that his relationship with Susie McBride, his father’s partner, was “cordial” at first, but became fraught during the course of the litigation over his father’s estate.

Scruggs pointed to a statement that Dutra gave publicly following the filing of the complaint in 2022 in which he claimed that the allegations were connected to his “deceased dad’s disgruntled girlfriend who I just got out of a contentious six-year litigation with over my father’s estate.” He also indicated at the time that he thought the case was politically motivated. 

“My name was being dragged through the media with false accusations,” Dutra told the court. “So I was trying to save my name, but clearly I lost the race.”

Scruggs showed emails between Dutra and Cabrillo College trustee Steve Trujillo, in which Dutra insinuated that political opponents could be fanning the flames — including Felipe Hernandez, his opponent in the 2022 county supervisor race, and fellow Watsonville City Councilmember Casey Clark, with whom Dutra said he had previously had a “complicated friendship” with. 

Scruggs also referred to messages between McBride and Siefke from as far back as 2018 that showed what appeared to be texts from McBride urging Siefke to go to the Los Angeles Police Department to press charges against Dutra. However, Dutra said that he was never contacted by any law enforcement agency about charges against him.

Dutra said that he does not recall much at all about the night that Siefke stayed at his Los Angeles house, when the incident allegedly occurred, but he was adamant that he never had inappropriate contact with the then-12-year-old Siefke: “I did not fondle him, no. I am not a pedophile.”

Scruggs then called Siefke’s mother, Kelli Siefke, to the stand. Before her testimony was cut short by an end-of-day recess, she confirmed that McBride was like a second mother to her son, and that Stephen Siefke did stay at Dutra’s house in Los Angeles in 2005. She said she had no concerns at all about him going on that trip because of how close the families were.

The trial is scheduled to resume at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, when Kelli Siefke will continue her testimony.

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