ASPEN, Colo.—An Aspen yoga teacher is headed to trial next month on charges of groping his students during yoga classes.
A lawyer for 48-year-old Steven Jon Roger says any contact between the yoga teacher and his students was a routine part of his yoga instruction.
The case goes to trial after Roger refused a plea deal on Tuesday. Roger refused to plead guilty on two misdemeanor charges of sexual contact without consent. The yoga teacher said he wouldn’t plead guilty because the convictions would result in a lifetime on the Colorado sex offender registry.
The yoga teacher’s lawyer, Tamas Viski-Hanka, told a Pitkin County judge that all the alleged groping incidents occurred in the same yoga position.
“Yoga is such that bodily contact with breasts and buttocks happens,” Viski-Hanka told Judge Erin Fernandez-Ely. “That’s the industry standard.”
But prosecutor Richard Nedlin disputed how standard the conduct was.
“The two counts here are feeling under the clothes of private parts,” Nedlin said. “There’s no mistaking that. There’s no industry standard for that.”
A jury trial will be scheduled for March.
Roger was originally charged last April with two felony charges of sexual assault. But those counts were dismissed in May and replaced with misdemeanor charges.
Four additional misdemeanor charges were dropped Tuesday. Nedlin told The Aspen Times that those alleged victims were either out of the country or decided not to pursue charges.
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Information from: The Aspen Times,
