Sex abuse charges against former GFPS teacher knocked down in plea agreement

The county attorney’s office reached a plea deal with William Harning, a former Great Falls Public Schools teacher, who was charged in 2023 on six felony charges of sexual abuse of children.

A plea deal dropping those six felony charges to two misdemeanor counts of obscenity, but in the agreement, prosecutors are dismissing the second count in exchange for Harning’s guilty plea.

In the deal, signed Aug. 29, the county attorney’s office proposes a sentence of a $500 fine and a six-month commitment to the Cascade County Adult Detention Center with all time suspended.

Prosecutor Kory Larsen filed a motion on Aug. 30 to vacate the scheduled trial and set a change of plea hearing.

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A trial had been set in April, but Larsen said at the time that a motion was filed to exclude an expert that required a response and more hearings, so that trial had been vacated and was later reset for September.

In October 2023, Harning appeared in district court and plead not guilty to all six felony charges.

He’d been arrested in Washington and booked into the Whatcom County jail, but released Sept. 13, 2023.

Harning posted $20,000 bond in September, Larsen said in last fall.

Harning is a former Great Falls Public Schools art teacher.

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A warrant was issued in late August 2023 for Harning in connection with an incident first reported in December 2021. He was arrested in Washington and made an initial appearance in person in Cascade County in mid-September 2023.

Harning appeared by Zoom on Oct. 4 since his bond conditions were modified to allow him to return to Washington, where he lives now, Larsen told The Electric in October.

Former GFPS teacher charged for sending, possessing explicit images of minors

According to the charging documents filed in district court in Cascade County, on Dec. 14, 2021, the Great Falls High School principal told Det. Clint Houston, the school resource officer at the time, that Harning was sending inappropriate pictures to a 17-year-old student at the school. Harning’s face could be seen in the image, according to the charging documents.

Houston contacted Det. Scott Bambenek for assistance. Bambanek is the GFPD’s Internet Crimes Against Children detective.

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The victim’s mother, who’s name we are withholding at the family’s request to protect the victim, told The Electric that the plea deal was “disgusting to me.”

She said that she was seeking clarification from the victim-witness agency on whether Harning would be required to register as a sex offender since the charges were downgraded.

She said that her son was openly gay and that he’d never been in Harning’s class.

Shesaid that her son received a friend request on Snapchat from a name other than Harning’s and that Harning had pretended to be a fellow student asking her son to come to Harning’s house.

She said her son did not go to the teacher’s house and Harning later sent multiple inappropriate photos to her son through Snapchat.

The victim’s mother said that her son screenshotted the photos and in one, Harning’s face was visible in a reflection and he was wearing a Great Falls High shirt.

She said her son brought it to the attention of school officials, who promptly investigated the matter. Fox said she and her son made his phone and all of Harning’s messages available to investigators immediately.

On Dec. 14, 2021, the detectives contacted Harning in his classroom that was unoccupied during his prep period. He was using his cell phone when the detectives walked in and then set his phone on the table, according to court documents.

Harning agreed to go to Houston’s office to speak with him, but left his phone on the table and Bambenek seized the phone for evidence. Harning chose not to make a statement and was released while the investigation continued, according to court documents.

After getting more information from the student, Bambenek got a search warrant for Harning’s phone.

“Due to a heavy backlog of devices, the phone could not be searched until May of 2023,” according to the court documents.

At that time Agent Brian Cassidy of the Montana Department of Justice’s Division of Criminal Investigation, provided the cell phone extraction to Bambenek, according to court documents.

The victim’s mother said that they understood GFPD was short staffed and backlogged, but were frustrated when the case stalled and retained a lawyer out of Billings to help navigate the process.

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Bambenek reviewed the data, which included numerous self-produced sexually explicit images of Harning and numerous sexually explicit images of children between the approximate ages of five and 18, according to the court documents.

In August 2023, Bambenek had a certified pediatric nurse practitioner review the images to ensure they were child sexual abuse material and she determined that they were sexually explicit images of children aged five to 16.

On Aug. 14, Bambenek requested the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to review 370 images recovered from Harning’s phone to identify any child victims.

A reader asked The Electric in the fall why GFPD couldn’t go through Harning’s phone themselves.

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GFPD Chief Jeff Newton told The Electric last fall that for full extraction of the evidence in criminal cases, the phone needed to go to the state, which has personnel who are certified to obtain the information and subsequently utilize that evidence in both state and federal court proceedings.

Newton told The Electric in the fall that if the phone had not been sent to the appropriate people to extract the information, the charge would have only been a misdemeanor.

He said the case stated as an Internet Crimes Against Children case, and per procedures, the phone immediately goes to the Montana Department of Justice’s Division of Criminal Investigation per ICAC policies for data extraction.

Newton said the time delay was due to the state agency’s backlog of multiple cases and the GFPD was not in a position to speed up their processes.

Former GFPS teacher charged for sending, possessing explicit images of minors

Former Capt. Rob Moccasin, head of GFPD’s investigations bureau in the fall of 2023, said that the training, equipment and salary would make it cost prohibitive for GFPD to hire someone to do that type of work.

He said it involved more work than most people understand to make the case presentable for trial.

“MDCI does a great job for us and like us have to prioritize their requests as they handle the whole state. This is not typical however that it takes this much time but that is dependent upon the types of crimes happening within the state at that time,” Moccasin told The Electric.

According to the Cascade County Attorney’s Office, Harning was in Washington when the warrant was issued.

Former GFPS Superintendent Tom Moore told The Electric in October 2023 that upon receiving the initial report, Harning was placed on administrative leave and he didn’t return to the district. Moore said that GFPS turned all information over to the Montana Office of Public Instruction for investigation and the eventual revocation of his teacher license in Montana.

Harning was also previously the education director at the Paris Gibson Museum of Art.

According to the warrant, Harning’s bond was set at $20,000.

The Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office in Washington told The Electric that their deputies were notified on Sept. 12, 2023 by the Snohomish County Violent Offenders Task Force that they had Harning in custody.

He was arrested by the US Marshal’s Service out of Seattle, which are part of the violent offenders task force, according to the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office.

Harning had an extraditable six counts of criminal sexual abuse of children warrant out of Cascade County that was confirmed to be valid, according to WCSO.

WCSO deputies met the violent offenders task force at the jail and took custody of Harning.

Based upon the active fugitive warrant status out of Montana, probable cause existed to arrest Harning for fugitive from justice and he was booked into the Whatcom County Jail, according to WCSO.