Two 15-year-old boys testified Wednesday that they were molested by a Cloverdale High School teacher's aide who invited them to his house and went hot-tubbing naked with them.
One of the boys, a sophomore at Montgomery High School, testified that Dyke Clyde Dewitt, 64, befriended him during a summer camping trip on the Russian River.
The other, a Cloverdale High sophomore, said Dewitt approached him on campus to talk about books and later asked him to his house, where they smoked pot and played dominoes.
He said the relationship changed when Dewitt took him out to dinner in Geyserville and began buying him clothes and cigarettes.
After a trip to a beach in Fort Bragg near the end of the 2012 school year, the boy said, Dewitt performed sex acts on him after getting out of the hot tub.
He said he returned to Dewitt's home at least every other day throughout the summer, crossing paths with the other boy more than two times.
"It felt kind of weird," testified the Cloverdale boy, identified in court as John Doe One. "Like I was being used."
Dewitt listened from the defense table, occasionally shaking his head. His wife sat in the courtroom gallery.
He has pleaded not guilty to 20 felonies, including multiple counts of oral copulation with a minor and sexual battery, and is free on $300,000 bail. He faces a decades-long prison sentence if convicted of all charges.
Dewitt remains a school district employee, Superintendent Steven Jorgensen said Wednesday. He is on leave, Jorgensen said, declining to say whether the leave was paid or unpaid.
The testimony came in a preliminary hearing for Dewitt to determine whether there is sufficient evidence for a trial on the charges. The hearing continues May 8.
The Montgomery High student, described by prosecutor Barbara Nanney as mildly autistic, took the stand first. He said he met Dewitt about six years ago at Thousand Trails RV Resort and Campground in Cloverdale, where he was camping with his grandparents.
Dewitt invited him into his trailer to watch movies, and over the course of the boy's two-month camping trip touched his "private parts" several times, the boy said.
The boy said he remained in contact with Dewitt by phone and email. Last year, Dewitt picked him up at his house and drove him to Cloverdale, where Dewitt made him sleep in his bed and molested him again, he said.
He said he slept over at Dewitt's house about 10 times.
Dewitt was arrested in October after the boy told his parents.
Dewitt's lawyer, Chris Andrian, pointed to inconsistencies in the second boy's statements. He told Redwood Children's Center officials that Dewitt had touched him over 100 times but offered a different number at the hearing.
The boy explained he put the uncomfortable memories "in a box in the back of my head," and had trouble recalling them.
"I don't want to remember this for the rest of my life," he said.
You can reach Staff Writer Paul Payne at 568-5312 or paul.payne@pressdemocrat.com.
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