On Tuesday, he seemed dazed to be one of them as he took the witness stand in his own defense.

In a soft voice, Montoya told jurors his family "meant everything" to him and spoke haltingly about the little girls he and his wife taught in their Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints primary class.

Montoya admitted he wasn't the "best teacher."

"You want to do a good job and convey the gospel principles in your lesson," he said, "and trying to deal with kids' [bad] behavior was challenging to me."

But Montoya denied the heinous crimes he is accused of: molesting 5- and 6-year-old girls while they colored pictures of Jesus and prayed in class.

That leaves jurors to believe either three girls - who all testified Montoya pulled up their skirts from behind and fondled them - or a supposed family man who recalled only trying to make his students behave.

Montoya testified he once re-tied the bow on a girl's dress when she wouldn't stop twirling the ties and distracting classmates. He helped another girl pray, he said, putting his hand on her shoulder or back and whispering the words into her ear.

Another time, he grabbed a girl's ankle and told her to put her feet down, instead of resting them on her chair and exposing her underwear, he said.

When testimony concluded Tuesday, the jury, five women and three men, had heard from all three girls and their mothers.

One woman described frightening and then seemingly unexplained changes she saw in her daughter during the time frame when the alleged abuse took place.

"She was having a hard time with men, her relationship with her dad, her grandpa," the woman said. "She refused to pray - we were struggling to get her to eat."

Her once well-behaved child became angry, her mother said, fighting with siblings. At a birthday dinner attended by Montoya, the mother said her daughter kept trying to hide under the table and asked her to take her to the bathroom to avoid him.

The mother of another girl tearfully described the difficult task of asking her daughter whether anything had happened to her.

"I was in shock," she said. "I said, 'Is there something that happened in Primary that you need to tell me?' She said, 'I can't mommy, it's really bad.' "

When the mother told her child she "wanted to keep her safe," the girl said Montoya had put his hand up her skirt.

The criminal case against Montoya began when the 12-year-old brother of one of the girls heard a friend ask whether their teacher had touched her, too. The boy told their mother, who then contacted the other parents.

On Tuesday, another brother of one of the girls testified his sister told him about the abuse. He didn't believe her.

"I told her, 'Yeah, right' because it was so hard to believe," the boy said in court. "I was going to tell someone but I forgot."

Prosecutor Troy Rawlings asked Montoya's wife, Angela, whether she knew her husband also had been volunteering at his son's school.

His wife of 10 years said she hadn't known. Angela Montoya described her husband as more of a disciplinarian with the class children while she used positive reinforcement and candy rewards.

She testified she didn't notice any strange behavior from the girls and that her busy husband had no contact with them outside of the church class he only occasionally taught without her.

Montoya had been working as a courthouse bailiff since 1999 and was attending night school to finish a degree in sociology when the alleged abuse occurred last year. His employment with the sheriff's office ended March 4.

The case is scheduled to go to the jury for consideration today following closing arguments before Judge Thomas L. Kay.

eneff@sltrib.com

The accused

Aaron Marcos Montoya, 33, is a former LDS church teacher and Salt Lake County deputy sheriff charged with 10 counts of molesting nine girls ages 3 to 11.

Prosecutors say Montoya abused three of the girls in his Syracuse church class - felony crimes he is standing trial for this week in 2nd District Court.

Montoya will be tried sepÂarately in the other cases.