CASPER — A scheduled three-week trial for a former award-winning foster parent accused of sexually abusing four female victims under his care got underway Wednesday in Natrona County District Court.
Steven Randall Marler, who turns 50 this year, faces 26 charges including two counts of first-degree sexual abuse of a minor, seven counts of second-degree sexual abuse of a minor and 11 counts of third-degree sexual abuse of a minor.
He also is charged with five counts of battery and one count of child endangerment. The time frame for the allegations spans a decade, from November 2012 to June 2022.
Natrona County Assistant District Attorney Brandon Rosty told an initial jury panel of nine men and seven women that the case would be complicated. The victims include several adopted children, some of whom have changed names, he said.
The trial will also include details from over 15 years, from when Marler first took in foster children until last year, when the investigation began.
“At one point this was one big happy family that went on trips,” he said. Rosty told the jury that it later sank into a culture where children were afraid to speak, afraid of punishment and “afraid of the defendant and his wife.”
The Marler home devolved further into a place where Marler had sexual sessions with girls in the home, telling one “I know I shouldn’t love you like this, but I do,” Rosty said.
Former foster daughter Adrianna Wogan, 21, took the stand Wednesday as the prosecution’s first witness, saying she first arrived at the Marlers’ home when she was 9, after being removed from her mother and grandmothers’ custodies. She stayed about 11 months.
Sent To The Marlers
She testified that she and two younger sisters were sent to the Marlers, where they they attended public school but rarely left the Casper Mountain home except for things involving Marler’s business or sled dog events.
She said she initially shared a bedroom with a younger sister and one of Marler’s biological daughters. After being there for a time, she said she was introduced to massages where girls would massage Marler in the living room and dining room, and he would massage them.
After about four months at the home, Wogan said, Marler started coming into the bedroom, pulling down the blanket around her in a lower bunk bed and touching her sexually. Her sister was asleep in the bunk above, she said. Marler’s daughter was not in the room.
She described a time just after her birthday in January 2014, when she had spilled soup while putting it away and was told to clean it up.
After returning to the kitchen and cleaning up the soup, she returned to bed and was laying on her side with her legs curled up, when she said Marler came in pulled down the blanket, her legs and then her pajamas.
Wogan said he then used his fingers to violate her.
“I was trying to move away, I was uncomfortable, I was crying,” she said. “He didn’t say anything … it felt like it was burning.”
Under cross examination, defense attorney Devon Petersen brought up 2016 statements that Wogan made during an interview that appeared to contradict her testimony in the courtroom.
He said in 2016 she had talked about the abuse beginning after a year, but she had only lived with the Marlers for 10 1/2 months.
Wogan said she was just a child and was telling time by the seasons. Petersen also challenged her 2016 statement that Marler would show up in her room every night for six months.
“I wouldn’t say it was every night,” Wogan said. “But a couple of times a week.”
The Massages
Rosty told the jury that the massages would take place when his wife was away or out of the room. They evolved into time with specific girls in the Marler bedroom, where the girls would massage Marler, and he would massage them.
Wogan during her testimony said that Marler’s biological daughters were not involved in the massages.
During his opening statement, Petersen told the jury that the Marler household did degrade into a place of fear for the adopted children.
He referred to a pantry and refrigerator that was locked and punishment that involved pushups and sit ups for extended periods, standing against the wall, and “spankings” with a belt or piece of rubber on bare bodies.
The home when the adopted children became teens evolved into a place where all the children slept in one room, with boys on one mattress and the girls on another Rosty said. The bathroom and shower doors were mandated to be open at all times.
Rosty told jurors that, during the trial, they would see video that had initially been erased and forensically recovered taken by cameras installed at the Marler home.
One video showed children standing in formation and a boy, who was initially clothed and then called offscreen by Marler, who would reappear naked and showed signs of a beating, Rosty said.
Other video evidence would show Marler sitting on an alleged victim’s face and getting massages from the children.
Defense: Issues, But Not Sexual Misconduct
Petersen said evidence will show that the home had discipline issues but there was no sexual misconduct. He told jurors that the accusations of sexual misconduct were a way for the children who had hit their teen years to get free from the Marler home.
“Those are the very reason that the sexual abuse allegations are made,” he said. “To get out of that home.”
Petersen said when the pandemic hit in 2020 the Marlers struggled with discipline and maintaining the home.
From 2013 to 2016, the Wyoming Department of Family Services “loved the Marlers” for their willingness to take in children from different backgrounds, Petersen said.
In 2013, Marler and his wife were recognized by the federal Administration for Children and Families with an Adoption Excellence Award, one of only three families across the nation to get the award that year.
Petersen said investigations into allegations made against the family prior to 2023 never resulted in charges.
He said the current charges stem from one adopted daughter telling a counselor that she did not want to return home after attending the Wyoming Cowboy Challenge. That’s when she made an allegation that “he sexually abused me,” Petersen said.
Wogan testified Wednesday that she initially did not report the sexual abuse, because, in the past, she had reported social work counselors that Marler had physically abused her. When she got home, she said, the Marlers confronted her for making the allegations and punished her.
Wogan testified that Marler also sexually assaulted her as they were working in a shed that held dog food. She said another adopted daughter saw it and confronted Marler.
“He told her to mind her own business,” Wogan said.
In addition to Wogan, three other victims of sexual abuse with Marler are expected to testify, Rosty told jurors. Among the other charges is a count of child endangerment where jurors are expected to hear from an adopted son about an incident where Marler kicked him off a roof, Rosty said.
More than 60 witnesses have been subpoenaed for the trial, which is expected to last three weeks.
Marler appeared in court free on a $225,000 bond wearing dress pants and a blue button-down shirt. He took notes during the opening testimony on a legal pad.
The charge of sexual abuse of a minor in the first-degree carries a penalty of up to 50 years in prison. Second-degree charges carry a penalty of up to 20 years, and third-degree charges can be punished with up to 15 years.
The child endangerment charge carries a penalty of up to one year in jail and a $1,000 fine or both. Battery charges carry a penalty of six months in jail and a fine of $750 or both.
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
