Emotional testimony in trial of Honeycutt

"I'm a good mother. I'm a good decisionmaker," a weeping Angela Honeycutt said in a cell-phone call secretly recorded by police detectives last spring. "What the [obscenity] happened?"

That is the question before a Bucks County Court jury today when it weighs the fate of Honeycutt, accused of sexually assaulting two boys during a teen sleepover April 12. Deliberations are expected to begin in the trial of Honeycutt, 39, a single mother of two who was supposed to be helping to chaperone the party.

Prosecutors say she instead got drunk, danced suggestively, talked about sex, and kissed three of the boys before stripping and enticing two into a shower. She is charged with having intercourse with one and molesting the other.

Honeycutt insists that she never touched either boy sexually, despite showering naked with each. Her lawyer called no defense witnesses.

The prosecution rested yesterday after an emotional day of testimony. Both alleged victims took the witness stand, as did the mother of the boy who hosted the party in their Lower Makefield home.

A tape of a wiretapped phone call between Honeycutt and the mother of the boy she is accused of raping also was played in court.

"I never touched him. I kissed him," Honeycutt told the mother in the April 15 call. "That's the extent of it."

The mother responded, "You stood in a shower with him and you didn't have sex?"

"No, I didn't touch him at all," Honeycutt said.

The incident began as a party for about 20 freshman boys and girls at the home of Lynne Long-Higham, 46. She testified that she had asked Honeycutt, a close friend and neighbor, to help her supervise them.

After all but six boys left, Honeycutt danced "kind of a striptease" for several boys in her son's bedroom, Long-Higham said, then asked "if anyone wanted to touch her," Long-Higham said. "One of the kids said 'I do,' and she took him into the bathroom."

After about a minute, Honeycutt returned and gave a "passionate" kiss to another boy, Long-Higham said. She said she and Honeycutt consumed a large bottle of red wine, and were intoxicated.

Sometime after midnight, she said, she discovered Honeycutt in the shower with a 15-year-old boy.

That boy testified yesterday that Honeycutt had stripped to her waist and asked if anyone wanted to shower with her. "I said, 'I will,' " he said.

While washing themselves, the boy said, he asked Honeycutt if he should get a condom from one of the other boys. "She said, 'Yes, go get it.' " He said they then had sex in the shower.

According to Long-Higham, the boy came out in a towel.

"I said, 'What happened?' He said, 'I had sex with her.' "

Not long after, Long-Higham said, she learned that Honeycutt was in the shower with a second boy, who was 14 at the time.

The boy testified that Honeycutt kissed and masturbated him in the shower.

Asked why she hadn't reined in Honeycutt, Long-Higham said she was having a bad reaction to a new drug her psychiatrist had prescribed for her depression. "I was pretty detached from what was going on, given my mental state," she said.

Honeycutt left soon after the second shower. Later that day, Long-Higham said, she confronted Honeycutt about the 15-year-old's claim. "She said, 'Yes, we had sex.' " But Honeycutt changed her story upon learning that police were investigating, Long-Higham said.

"After she went to see the attorney, she said she didn't have sex with him," Long-Higham said. "She asked, 'Will you support that story?' I said 'Yes.' "

Long-Higham admitted she wanted to protect Honeycutt, adding, "I was not even sure what was going on. I couldn't conceive that she would have sex with a friend of my son's."

The 15-year-old, meanwhile, testified that he was teased in school that Monday by girls who had heard he had kissed Honeycutt at the party.

"I got home feeling really destroyed," the boy said. He told his mother about the teasing and the kissing.

When she asked if anything else had happened, he said, "I just started crying. She asked if we had sex, and I said 'Yes.' . . . I was an emotional mess." His mother contacted police.

Long-Higham has pleaded guilty to endangering the welfare of children and corrupting the morals of minors. She has not been sentenced.

"I was there when it happened, and I did not stop it," she testified. "I was responsible for these children's well-being."