photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Wyatt Farrow, left, is pictured with his attorney, Cooper Overstreet, on Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025, in Douglas County District Court.

Story updated at 4:59 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 4:

The girlfriend of a defendant standing trial for aggravated criminal sodomy told a jury on Thursday that she and her boyfriend thought that the two alleged teen victims might “hit it off” but that a plan for the teen boy to sexually assault the teen girl after getting her drunk never existed.

The girlfriend of Wyatt Farrow took the stand Thursday morning — the only witness presented by the defense after the state rested on Wednesday. She said that the teens, one of them Wyatt’s younger brother, the other her longtime best friend, had similar personalities — both shy and “good people.”

The state has charged Wyatt, who was 19 at the time, with two felony counts of aggravated criminal sodomy, two felony counts of furnishing alcohol to a minor and one misdemeanor count of hosting minors consuming alcohol.

The state, represented by Senior Assistant District Attorney Ricardo Leal, has argued that Wyatt concocted a plan for his little brother, 17 at the time, to have illicit relations with the teen girl — a plan that involved procuring flavored vodka from the boy’s father and hosting a sleepover in the basement of a Lawrence home, during which Wyatt allegedly coached his drunken brother through a sexual assault that included handing him a vibrator during the encounter and recording a video with the girl afterward to assure her that nothing illegal had occurred.

Wyatt’s little brother, Everett Farrow, was originally charged with the crime, but that case was dismissed after Everett was given immunity to testify in his brother’s case, in which Everett went from being a suspect to being a named victim of aggravated criminal sodomy.

Everett testified on Wednesday that his brother had done nothing wrong and that he did not consider himself a victim of a sex crime.

The boys’ father, Anthony Farrow, was found guilty last summer of unlawfully hosting the four minors who were consuming alcohol that night. Wyatt had sent texts to Anthony asking him to bring home flavored vodka for the sleepover participants, mentioning the teen girl by name, and saying “The alcohol is for a good cause” and “Everett might just finally kiss a girl.”

The teen girl’s friend who testified for the defense Thursday said that Anthony had provided a bottle of blue vodka and that the teens drank shots of it in the basement as they played games and hung out. She said that her friend consumed two shots — the friend had said one during her testimony Wednesday — and a sip of hard seltzer, and that she did not consider her very drunk that night. She also said no drugs were consumed by anyone.

She testified that she herself had four shots of the vodka and that Wyatt had six or seven and was drunk by the end of the evening.

In her telling, the teen girl and Everett were “hitting it off,” especially after a game of truth or dare, in which Everett was dared to lick the teen girl’s stomach. After that, the teen, whom she described as “bubbly and flirty,” was lying in Everett’s lap, she said, and initiated kissing.

Everett in testimony Wednesday said that the girl had initiated all the intimate activity, but the girl testified that she had consented to nothing that night beyond an initial kiss.

The woman said no one put Everett and the teen girl in bed together. Everett had testified on Wednesday that he was drunk and went to sleep in Wyatt’s room at Wyatt’s suggestion. The girl had testified that her memory of the night was incomplete but that she felt “heavy” and woozy” after the truth or dare game, that she had hit her head and that in the bedroom she felt like she could not move her body, that Everett was painfully biting her and speaking with Wyatt as he came in and out of the room during the sexual activity.

The woman testified that she saw Everett and the girl “spooning” in the bed because the door was open. She said she shut the door to give the two more privacy but that she was not concerned that either one might have been unable to consent for any reason.

The woman said she heard “loud moaning” from the teen girl and feared that the dad upstairs would also hear it. She said that she then had the idea to have Wyatt take a vibrator into the room “to speed up” the encounter and “get it over with.”

She said she and the teen girl had discussed the use of vibrators in the past.

Eventually, the woman said that she and Wyatt went into the bedroom to stop the two younger teens. She said they then spoke separately with the teens about what had happened.

That’s when Wyatt took the teen girl into a bathroom and recorded a conversation with her in which the girl is heard expressing anxiety about the sexual activity and fear that she might have raped the boy. Wyatt assured the girl that the encounter had been consensual and was nothing to fret about.

The woman testified that the teen girl sounded far more intoxicated in the video than she had seemed earlier in the evening, despite not having consumed more alcohol, which seemed odd to her.

When asked why the recording was made by Wyatt and later sent to the teen girl, the woman said she and Wyatt wanted “to make sure everybody’s stories were the same” and that “nothing was changed up at the last minute.”

The prosecutor, Leal, asked on cross-examination, “The video was made for protection?”

“Yes,” the woman said.

The woman considered texts that the teen sent the next day — the day their friendship ended, she said — as insinuating and accusatory.

Testimony Wednesday indicated that the teen girl had initiated text conversations with the other teens at the suggestion of police, to whom the girl had by then reported a crime as well as undergoing a sexual assault exam at the hospital.

Wyatt, who has been free on a $50,000 bond, did not testify in his own defense.

Jurors heard closing arguments in the case and began deliberating Thursday afternoon. They will resume deliberations at 9:30 a.m. Friday.