Mistrial Declared in Teen-Age Sex Case : Court: Jury is split 11-1 in favor of acquitting a 37-year-old Thousand Oaks woman on charges involving a minor. New trial is possible.

A judge declared a mistrial Friday when a jury could not reach consensus in the case of a 37-year-old Thousand Oaks woman accused of engaging in a variety of sex acts with a teen-age neighbor boy.

Ventura County Superior Court Judge Frederick A. Jones made his ruling in the case of Gloria (Gigi) Goldman after the jury announced it was hopelessly divided 11 to 1 in favor of acquittal.

Harriet Reisser of Ventura, the juror who held out for a conviction, said afterward that she believed the young man, now a 19-year-old Navy seaman, was telling the truth when he said Goldman had seduced him from 1991 to 1994.

“Why would the church and the police want him to go to court if he were lying?” Reisser said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

Reisser acknowledged she had a problem hearing some of the testimony, but said she heard enough to determine the young man was not lying.

Jury foreman Andre Barbeau said the majority of the jurors simply thought the teen-ager’s testimony was too difficult to believe.

The youth testified that he and Goldman had engaged in sex at Disneyland, on a ski lift and on top of a houseboat where Goldman’s then-husband, Don, slept below.

“Some of those stories were too outlandish,” Barbeau said. “It came down to credibility.”

Barbeau said the jury’s first vote on Thursday yielded an 8-4 split in favor of acquittal, but after deliberating Friday, jurors quickly reached an 11-1 split.

Jones said he would be willing to consider approving a new trial next Thursday if prosecutors decide they want to try again to seek a conviction against Goldman.

“I understand your inability to reach a decision on this case,” Jones told the jury. “This was a question of the credibility of the witnesses.”

A mother of two young daughters, Goldman faced 32 counts of having sex with a minor. She denied the incidents ever took place, and said the youth had been infatuated with her and fantasized about having sex with her.

She also testified that a suggestive 1994 telephone conversation between her and the young man, taped by sheriff’s deputies, was not what it seemed.

“I’m very pleased,” Goldman said after the mistrial was declared. “It was just totally outrageous.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Mark Pachowitz contended during the trial that the former elementary school teacher had seduced teen-age boys at her home; he recounted allegations of nude bathing, oral sex, group sex and other sexual acts.

Defense attorney Neil Quinn argued that the young man was a braggart with a sinister side, and that his story was a complete fabrication--the product of an imagination fed on Penthouse magazine and other sexually explicit materials.

The teen-ager testified that his former neighbor, whom he had referred to as “Aunt Gigi,” began to seduce him in 1991, when he was 15.

He said the alleged abuse, which came to light last year when he recounted it to a religious adviser, lasted nearly three years, and that he and Goldman engaged in as many as 1,000 sex acts during that time.

Goldman denied the youth’s claims. She denied his accusations that the teen-ager ever made a nude tape of himself for her, or that together they watched an adult videotape she owned titled “Passage to Ecstacy.”

But Goldman admitted that she and the youth had been very close. She explained menstruation to him, and advised him how to kiss girls, she testified.

She said it was not unusual for the boy to use her hot tub--possibly without a bathing suit--or to be alone in her bedroom wearing just a towel. And she testified that on at least one instance she was partially nude in his presence, covering her bare chest with a sweat shirt.

Goldman, however, testified that a taped 1994 telephone conversation between her and the teen-ager was misleading.

In the phone call, Goldman urges the youth not to testify against her, and the teen-ager speaks of missing their intimacy.

Bustillo is a Times staff writer and Elias is a Times correspondent.