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Jess Taylor, (left) 17, Jenna Montgomery, 15, (middle) pleaded guilty this week to kidnapping, robbery and assault charges in the beating of 16-year-old Dustyn Murrain on Feb. 10. Blue Kalmbach, who turned 16 in June, is to appear in court Aug. 21.

(Multnomah County)

Kelli Murrain sat with her 16-year-old son, Dustyn, in Multnomah County Circuit Court this week and told her son's attackers that she couldn't forgive them for what they had done.

"Not at this time. I can't ... Maybe some day,'' Murrain told The Oregonian on Friday. "But it's still too fresh for me. I told them, though, that I hoped that through all this they would learn and could become productive citizens.''

Kelli Murrain said she was satisfied with the sentencing of three of the four teens accused of luring her son to a shed in Southeast Portland on Feb. 10 and torturing him there by striking him with a crowbar and a revolver and carving a swastika into his forehead.

Jenna Montgomery, 15, and Jess Taylor, 17, pleaded guilty Wednesday to first-degree kidnapping, first-degree robbery and second-degree assault, and apologized directly to Dustyn Murrain.

Under plea deals, Montgomery was sentenced to nine years and 11 months in custody and Taylor to seven years and nine months. Each will be in the custody of Oregon Youth Authority at MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility, followed by three years of post-prison supervision.

Shane Connell, 14, was previously sentenced in Juvenile Court to 10 years. Blue Kalmbach, who turned 16 in June, is to appear in court Aug. 21.

"It's acceptable. It's a substantial period of time. They're not going to be out walking with the rest of society. I'm quite all right with it,'' Kelli Murrain said. "But, as a mom, if somebody did that to your kid, it's never going to be enough.''

Dustyn Murrain

Dustyn Murrain is living with friends, hopes to continue courses in the fall at a local community college to get his high school general equivalency diploma and then pursue auto mechanic training. He isn't returning to David Douglas High School, where he and his attackers were once classmaates.

The scar on his forehead is fading and he covers it with his bangs, his mother said.

"It's not blatantly visible, but it's there,'' Kelli Murrain said. "It will take time for it to fade completely.''

But her son struggles with the emotional scars left by the attack, she said. He suffers from post-traumatic stress, has difficulty trusting others and gets nervous in crowds and among strangers, she said.

Taylor's apology to her son seemed more genuine than Montgomery's, she said.

"I really think Jess Taylor was remorseful,'' she said. As for Montgomery, "I felt like she felt more sorry for herself than for what she actually did,'' Murrain said.

Her son plans to take a monthlong vacation out of state with friends and family, she said, but return to Oregon for the expected plea from the remaining defendant, Kalmbach.

Murrain said she expects Kalmbach, who prosecutors said was responsible for the most brutal, physical damage to her son, will serve more time than the others.

She said she suspects the horrific encounter stemmed from Kalmbach's anger that Dustyn Murrain was dating Kalmbach's ex-girlfriend. Kalmbach told court authorities that Dustyn Murrain had called him gay on Facebook and bullied him.

Kalmbach, whose parents are divorced, wasn't living with either of his parents at the time of the assault, but with co-defendant Connell. He apparently wanted to live on his own, according to a Multnomah County pretrial supervision officer who interviewed Kalmbach's mother.

"She did not report him as a runaway because she wanted him to figure out how hard it is to live alone, and that would make him come home,'' officer Chelsea Fonua wrote in her report.

Kelli Murrain said she's Dustyn's grandmother who adopted him and raised him as her own. Marcie Dams, Dustyn's biological mother, also spoke at this week's sentencing.

Dams pointed out in court that Dustyn Murrain's attackers had once been friends with him. All the teens had known each other at David Douglas High School. But the defendants had dropped out and were not attending school at the time of the attack.

She said she couldn't understand how friends could do what the group of teens did to Dustyn Murrain. She also expressed hope that Montgomery could turn her life around, according to prosecutor Christopher Ramras.

Kelli Murrain said she wasn't as disturbed as she expected to be when she faced Montgomery and Taylor in court.

"It's nice to see it coming to an end, finally, and knowing that these teens will have to pay for what they did to my son.''

To learn more, read a pretrial sentence officer's details of the attack.

--Maxine Bernstein