Attorneys offered opening arguments Wednesday in the trial of Nathan Erfurth, a former Soldotna teacher and union head accused of sexual abuse of a student.

Nathan Erfurth, 37, is a former Soldotna High School history teacher and also former president of the Kenai Peninsula Education Association. He 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 for those alleged crimes by a Kenai grand jury in June 2023, and has 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.

Erfurth has denied the allegations.

District Attorney Dan Strigle, the prosecutor, said Wednesday that the case is about a breach of trust. He said Erfurth was a trusted teacher, husband and community member. He alleges that Erfurth abused that trust to commit the crimes he’s accused of — to convince others that “what they saw wasn’t what they thought they saw.”

“Trust proved to be the best kind of camouflage,” he said.

Strigle promised “piecemeal work” to show how Erfurth thought and how he convinced other people to ignore or overlook his shows of affection and overstepping connection with one of his students. He cited the multiple investigations into Erfurth’s conduct by the school district and by law enforcement in the mid 2010s — “what they saw was exactly what they thought they were seeing.”

Attorney Eric Derleth, the defense, says that Erfurth was a young, dedicated teacher who tried to look after a troubled student. He said he aims to discredit the accuser. “Negative space,” Derleth said, would define his defense. Evidence that could exist that doesn’t and knowledge that the student lacks — specifically the lack of both digital evidence and certain knowledge about Erfurth’s body.

Strigle spelled out the timeline as it has been described by the state since Erfurth’s original arrest in 2023. Erfurth, he says, developed a relationship with a 15-year-old student in one of his classes and developed a fatherly relationship with her.

That student called him “Vader,” for “father” Strigle and the student both said Monday. He called her Mija, a Spanish term of endearment akin to “my daughter.”

Erfurth, Derleth says, was “an important part of this young girl’s life.”

Strigle said Erfurth and the student communicated at length outside of school by using various applications. Erfurth was once counseled by the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District for crossing boundaries — but he continued his connection to the student and another investigation, by Soldotna Police Department, looked into his conduct with her on an international trip. After those investigations, Erfurth began to communicate with the student using applications with disappearing messages.

Over time, Strigle said, the state alleges that Erfurth’s relationship with the student became sexual, specifically in 2017 and 2018, but ended when she began another relationship. It was her fiance, now husband, who Strigle said realized that Erfurth had allegedly sexually abused the student and pushed her to go to police.

Alaska State Troopers secretly recorded four roughly hour-long conversations between the student and Erfurth in 2023. Derleth says that Erfurth repeatedly maintained his innocence throughout all four recordings, though he also said that Erfurth knew about the investigation and was aware police were likely listening in.

Since the initial arrest in May, much attention has been paid by Derleth to a key piece of evidence included in the trooper’s affidavit included with charging documents. Investigator Samuel Webber writes in the affidavit that in the fourth and final recorded conversation, the student asks “do you regret sleeping with me?” to which Erfurth responds “If this is how I’m being repaid for it, yes.”

Derleth and Erfurth both have said that the question Erfurth was responding to was not “do you regret sleeping with me?” but instead “do you regret taking me in?” Derleth said Wednesday that the student said this month, after being asked years later and for the first time what question she had asked, that it was the latter — “do you regret taking me in?”

“The state portrayed it as an admission of having sex, put in the public record, and for the last 26 months we’ve been dealing with that in newspaper articles and radio stories that he admitted having a sexual relationship with the student,” Derleth said. “The reality is he denied it.”

The trial is set to continue for around two weeks, into early August. Strigle had not finished questioning his first witness on Wednesday when the trial was interrupted by a tsunami warning.

Reach reporter Jake Dye at jacob.dye@peninsulaclarion.com.