Agent tells details of Crabtree’s phone chat

CHATSWORTH ? Glendale attorney Arthur Crabtree told an FBI agent posing as a 13-year-old girl that he had openly dated a 16-year-old girl before, the agent testified on Wednesday.

Crabtree, 44, of Santa Clarita, faces one felony count of attempted lewd acts on a child, three felony counts of attempting to send harmful matter over the Internet, four misdemeanor counts of attempted child molestation and one misdemeanor count of child molestation.

FBI agent Timothy Alon made contact with Crabtree, a former Glendale Police Officer, over the course of a few years while posing as three different underage girls, he testified.

While pretending to be a 13-year-old girl from the San Fernando Valley area ? using the screen name of JennySFV13 ? Crabtree told Alon that he had dated a 16-year-old, “for the longest time,” the agent said.

“Her mom was super cool with it,” Alon read from a chat transcript, adding that in the chat, Crabtree told JennySFV13 that the girl’s mother even rented them a cabin to stay in when they went vacationing together.

During their chats, Crabtree also encouraged JennySFV13 to meet with him and call him at an 800-phone number, but Alon never did, he testified.

“And now, at one point you tell [Crabtree] that you were having some reservations because your friends say he’s too old for you?” Deputy District Atty. Tannaz Mokayef asked Alon, to which he replied yes.

Alon also testified that Crabtree, in return, showed reservations about JennySFV13 telling her friends about him, saying that in a chat, Crabtree told “her” that after she tells some people, they tell some people and “next thing you know, we’re both in trouble,” Alon read.

Crabtree was arrested Jan. 19, 2005, after he sent a bus ticket to an undercover Department of Justice agent posing as a different 13-year-old girl and arranged a rendezvous at the Greyhound bus station in downtown Los Angeles, Mokayef said. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies arrested Crabtree at the station.

Crabtree’s defense attorney, Patrick E. Clancy, argues that Crabtree knew all along that he was chatting on the Internet with undercover police, and started a game of harassment with law enforcement because he was “mad.”

“Is it in your training to get suspects to state what sexual acts they want to do rather than you saying what sex acts you want to do?” Clancy asked Alon on Wednesday.

Alon said it was.

During opening statements last week, Clancy said that Crabtree knew how to spot an undercover police officer online, and knew that police would not meet with him unless there was a promise of sex.

On Wednesday, Clancy told Alon that whenever Crabtree would ask JennySFV13 what she wanted to do if they met up, Alon would “turn it back on him,” usually asking, “what do you want to do?”

“You don’t want to meet him for pizza, right?” Clancy said. “You want to meet him when he has made it clear it’s for a sex encounter of some type.”