Nathan Erfurth, a 37-year-old former Soldotna High School history teacher and former head of the Kenai Peninsula Education Association, was found guilty Tuesday, by unanimous verdict of a 12-person jury, of 24 counts of second-degree sexual abuse of a minor and four counts of unlawful exploitation of a minor.
Erfurth was arrested in May 2023 after a former student alleged that he had sexually abused her in 2017 and 2018 when she was a minor. He was indicted on 61 charges by a Kenai grand jury in June 2023, and pleaded not guilty to each. In 2024, Kenai Superior Court Judge Kelly Lawson dismissed six charges of possession of child pornography against Erfurth, but denied a motion to dismiss 42 counts of second-degree sexual abuse of a minor, seven counts of fourth-degree sexual abuse of a minor and six counts of unlawful exploitation of a minor.
When Erfurth’s trial began on July 14, he faced 55 charges. Lawson granted a motion for acquittal on five counts on July 30, the 13th day of the trial, after Erfurth’s attorney argued that the state hadn’t presented evidence to support those charges. A further four charges were dismissed on Aug. 5, the 17th day of trial, after the state learned that those charges fell outside of the statute of limitations.
After six days of deliberations, the jury returned a guilty verdict on 28 of the remaining charges and a not guilty verdict on 18 charges. According to a release from the State Department of Law, the jury also found that Erfurth’s conduct, acting not just as an adult but as a father figure to the student, constituted a severe aggravating factor in the sexual abuse charges, which may increase his sentence. Each of the charges has a range of five to 15 years of incarceration. Each charge described specific crimes in specific locations.
During a trial that stretched over weeks, the jury heard extensive testimony from the former student, from her mother, from current and former heads of the human resources for the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District, an investigator from the Alaska State Troopers, and from Erfurth and his wife, among others. Jurors also toured a “tiny home” — said to be the setting for many of the crimes — that was brought to the courthouse by the defense.
The state argued that Erfurth, while employed as a high school teacher in Soldotna, sexually abused a minor student multiple times between 2017 and 2018. He was investigated by the school district twice for inappropriate conduct with the same student, in 2016 and 2017, without any serious disciplinary action taken.
After the second investigation, Erfurth began communicating with the student using Signal, an encrypted messaging app with disappearing messages. Soon after, the student says he began to touch her inappropriately. The sexual misconduct escalated from there, prosecutors said.
The student brought her allegations to police after her then-fiance confronted her about her relationship with Erfurth — Erfurth said during the trial he had acted as her father for many years and was set to walk the student down the aisle at her wedding.
District Attorney Dan Strigle said during his closing argument earlier this month that Erfurth had engaged in a textbook example of grooming. He had used his position as a trusted teacher and later as a father figure to get people to overlook clearly “abnormal” affection and private communications they shared. He had taken advantage of a vulnerable student with an “incremental pushing of boundaries.” He was proactive to “control perception” of the relationship.
Erfurth denied the allegations but did not deny spending time alone with the student or using encrypted messaging to communicate with her. He said he used encrypted messages to keep other students from seeing what he and the student spoke about. He said that it was “taxing” to move in the school and be concerned about what students and cameras were seeing. Strigle asked why a person with an open and obvious and healthy relationship with a student would be so concerned about surveillance.
“Clear as day, Nathan used Signal to hide,” Strigle said.
Strigle pointed to the student describing parts of Erfurth’s body to the jury that she shouldn’t have seen or had knowledge of. He spotlighted Erfurth’s erratic words and behavior during a conversation secretly recorded by the police where Erfurth repeatedly tells the student to return to police and tell them she made up the allegations.
Eric Derleth, Erfurth’s attorney, argued in closing that the student was lying. He focused at length on a single question asked by the student in the secretly recorded conversations that had been cited by troopers in arresting Erfurth in 2023, but which the student said at trial was mis-transcribed by the troopers. He presented a series of former classmates who said they didn’t trust her — though several said they stayed friends with her at the urging of the Erfurths. Derleth questioned the idea that Erfurth could possibly have had sex with a minor multiple times in his home, the tiny home and his classroom without his wife or anyone else noticing.
Derleth said that Erfurth and his wife were two people who came to live and work in Alaska and who struggled to start a family — “they found a girl that God had sent to them.”
“This is a case about illicit sex with a child,” Derleth said. “By a man who, by all accounts, was a wonderful human being, a wonderful father and husband, a wonderful teacher.”
Strigle said that the student’s story isn’t being taken in a vacuum. Though there aren’t pictures or plainly documented accounts of illicit sex acts, he pointed to many details that were corroborated. Erfurth used Signal to secretly communicate with the student. She describes spending time alone with him inside the tiny house in her journals. Strigle said she took the stand for days to undergo the deeply unpleasant work of sharing her story, even when details were inconvenient for the prosecution, in an effort to relay the truth of what happened to her.
He also pointed to the multiple previous investigations of Erfurth’s inappropriate conduct with the student — also to testimony that Erfurth’s wife had corrected the student when she crossed physical boundaries and that she’d cried over her husband’s relationship with the student. Rather than pull away from the girl, Erfurth became further entangled in her life — bringing her onto his phone plan, accompanying her to doctors’ appointments and intervening in her social life. Why would he do all that, Strigle asked, if he weren’t “getting something from it.”
“Nathan Erfurth was able to get people to deny what was right in front of their very eyes,” Strigle said.
Derleth did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday after the verdict was delivered. Speaking in the courtroom on Tuesday, he said that he and his client “disagree and are disappointed with the verdict.”
The Kenai Peninsula Borough School District on Wednesday confirmed that Erfurth had been terminated “shortly after the allegations came to light.” Erfurth’s conduct and the two previous investigations predate the tenures of the current KPBSD superintendent and HR director. The district wrote that they conduct “thorough background checks” on employees and volunteers and provide annual training on professional boundaries and child abuse prevention. The district recently updated its policies on preventing harm against students by staff members to more firmly define prohibited conduct, reinforce mandatory reporting obligations, and ensure “swift disciplinary action when necessary.”
“We remain committed to ensuring that the trust placed in educators is honored at all times,” the statement reads. “We also recognize the courage it takes for survivors to share their story, and encourage all community members to report suspicious behavior.”
Erfurth was taken into custody Tuesday and is currently being held at Wildwood Pretrial Facility. Sentencing is scheduled for Dec. 11 in the Kenai Courthouse.
This story was updated Wednesday with comment from the school district.
Reach reporter Jake Dye at jacob.dye@peninsulaclarion.com.
