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In re Application of Hartmann11/10/2005
o K.H.V., Hartmann took her, her brother, and a female friend to a movie in Lincoln, Nebraska, on December 29, 2001. K.H.V. testified that Hartmann sat next to her in the movie theater and placed a coat over the armrest between their seats. She testified that during the movie, Hartmann repeatedly touched her in a sexual manner with his hand beneath the coat. In his testimony, Hartmann testified that he attended the movie with K.H.V. and the others on January 5, 2002. He admitted that he placed his hand on K.H.V.'s leg early in the movie in an attempt to retrieve some candy that she was "hiding." He then stated: "And the truth is that I -- I left my hand on her leg longer than I should have." When asked why he did so, he replied:
In retrospect, it seems to me that in the -- the warmth of that moment and given the closeness that [K.H.V.] and I felt as uncle and niece, it made me -- and given the fact that I had been, in my opinion, having a dismal holiday season, it just made me feel comfortable and better.
When asked how long he left his hand on his niece's leg, he replied, "I don't know. It was longer than it should have been." Hartmann stated that he touched only the "middle outer part" of K.H.V.'s leg. He emphatically denied that he touched K.H.V. in a sexual manner or that his hand was under a coat when he touched her leg. Although he described the initial contact as "horsing around," he acknowledged that it was "a horrible mistake on my part to -- to maintain that contact."
On March 14, 2002, Hartmann wrote a letter to K.H.V. and her parents in which he apologized for his actions at the movie theater without specifically describing those actions. Hartmann supplied a copy of this letter to the Commission along with other information concerning the movie theater incident. In the letter, Hartmann stated:
I remember exactly when things went wrong in my relation with [K.H.V.] It was at our Thanksgiving family meal here at home in the year 2000, I felt [K.H.V.'s] legs against mine under the dinner table, and it was comforting somehow. As crazy as this might sound, I think that at first it was a kind of innocent flirtation going on, if you can use that phrase in this context--but, as we all now know, it went further than that, much further than it ever should have.
Hartmann testified that this letter was written after his brother and sister-in-law, the parents of K.H.V., told him that K.H.V. was upset about the incident at the movie theater. He testified that the letter referred to his touching of his niece's leg during the movie, as recounted in his testimony, and that at the time he wrote the letter, he was not aware that K.H.V. had alleged any contact of a sexual nature. The criminal charge arising from this incident was initially filed in April 2002. Hartmann testified that he eventually entered a no contest plea to the reduced charge of third degree assault, in part to spare members of his family from appearing in court "to argue about something that should have been resolved at the family level." He now regrets his decision to enter into the plea agreement.
In her testimony at the hearing and in written statements submitted to the Commission, K.H.V. also accused Hartmann of unlawful conduct on numerous occasions before the movie theater incident and later on the same day that the incident occurred. She claimed that many of the incidents occurred during family gatherings. Hartmann denied these accusations, except for one occasion on which he admitted touching his niece's knee while seated next to her at a table. Although he acknowledged a "level of flirtation" between himself and K.H.V. beginning in late 2000 or 2001, Hartmann denied that t
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