FORT COLLINS - An articulate, composed but nervous 25-year-old man told jurors on Tuesday that his former Catholic priest touched him inappropriately in 1999, when he was 17.

The alleged victim, who now lives in Ohio, told Larimer County District Court jurors that he waited more than four years to tell anyone about his encounters with Father Timothy Evans because he was scared and confused.

Evans, now 43, is being tried on two counts of sexual assault on a child by one in a position of trust and one count of sexual assault on a child in a pattern of abuse.

Prosecutors allege that Evans pinned the boy while wrestling with him on his bed in the church rectory, then caressed him under his boxer shorts. They say on one occasion he grabbed the boy's buttocks while hugging him goodbye.

Evans allegedly committed the acts early in his tenure at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Fort Collins, where he served from 1998 until the Archdiocese of Denver removed him in 2002. He had given the boy a part-time job at the church and the pair allegedly spent hours alone watching televised football games and talking about the boy's "inability to love."

When the young man did go to the police in 2003, a detective directed him to record a phone conversation with Evans. Jurors heard that recording Tuesday.

In it, Evans agreed that "a lot of what happened in our relationship was inappropriate and shouldn't have happened," and told his alleged victim, "I shouldn't have been so damn obsessed with you."

Evans' lawyer, Joseph Gavaldon, told the jury the alleged sexual encounters did not happen. He said the taped conversation showed only how confused the youth was about a troubled childhood that Evans had tried to help him navigate.

The trial is expected to last at least the rest of the week.

Evans is set for trial in Jefferson County on April 2 on a charge of sexual assault on a child by a person of trust in a pattern of abuse. That stems from an incident prosecutors say happened while he served at Arvada's Spirit of Christ parish from 1995 to 1997.

bargec@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5059