KEOKUK — The fate of Benjamin Trane's future is now in the hands of a South Lee County jury.

The nine-man, three-woman jury deliberated for about one hour late Thursday afternoon before recessing for the night at about 4:45 p.m.

District Judge Mark Kruse ordered the jury to return to the courthouse at 8:30 a.m. today to resume it's attempt to determine if Trane is a guilty of third-degree sexual abuse, exploitation of a child by a counselor and child endangerment.

The charges stem from incidents that occurred at Midwest Academy, a private, for profit therapeutic boarding school, where Trane was the owner and director.

The 39-year-old Trane spent almost three hours on the witness stand Wednesday being questioned by his attorney, Lisa Schaefer, about activities at the school. He repeatedly denied sexually abusing a female teenager at the school while he was her counselor. He also denied putting other students in danger by placing them in isolation rooms, withholding food and preventing them from talking to students and staff as punishment for violating the school's strict policies.

He returned briefly to the witness stand Thursday, where he again repeatedly denied the accusations while being systematically questioned by Denise Timmins, an assistant Iowa attorney general, who is prosecuting him.

However, the jury spent most of Thursday listening to closing arguments from the two attorneys, who offered dramatically different versions of what was happening at the school located just north of Keokuk.

Timmins admitted there are no eyewitnesses to the alleged sexual assault, nor is there any forensic evidence to confirm the victim's claims of sexual abuse at the hands of Trane. However, Timmins said there was a vast amount of corroborating testimony from other people, who were called as state's witnesses.

"The (victim) said it happened," Timmins told the jury during her three-hour closing summation. "And he said it didn't happen. You have to determine who you find to be more believable, more credible ... The victim had nothing to gain ... She had no motive to lie ... The defendant, on the other hand, has everything to lose (if he is convicted)."

She asked jurors to ignore Trane's repeated denials and his request to "simply believe" him that nothing he did at the year-around boarding school put any children in danger.

"The defendant had all the power and control over these kids," she told the jury. "He abused that power. He is not powerful here (in the courtroom). You are the ones who have the power now. Use that power to seek the truth .... to do justice. Find Ben Trane guilty."

Schaefer, a private attorney in Burlington appointed by the court to represent Trane, also asked jury members to use their common sense to make the correct decision and find the accusations against her client were baseless, and the result of a troubled teenager who was angry with Trane for punishing her after she violated school rules.

"Reasonsable doubt abounds everywhere in this case," she told jurors. "There is a significant lack of evidence that is needed to find my client guilty. This is truly a 'he said, she said,' case.

"The prosecutor is asking you to readily accept everything the (alleged victim) said occurred and reject everything Mr. Trane said on the stand did not happen."

She said that when "you take all of her (the victim) stories as a whole, they just don't add up ... It just doesn't make sense. There are too many things that don't match. You know why? Because they didn't happen."

Trane is charged with three specific crimes:

• Third-degree sexual abuse. To prove that charge, prosecutors must convince the jury Trane forced the teenager to have digital, oral or vaginal sex with him.

• Sexual exploitation of a child by a counselor. To prove that charge, prosecutors have to prove he forced the girl to have sexual contact with him while he was acting as a counselor or a mentor.

• Child endangerment of a person under 14 years of age. Prosecutors must prove that Trane "knowingly acted in a manner which created substantial risk to the emotional, health or safety of children at the school."

Timmins used two examples of the third charge to prove that children in his care were placed in danger by school rules, which included forcing disruptive students into an "isolation room" where they could be kept until their behavior changed.

Two boys, one 12 years old and the other 13, were named as victims in that charged.

According to Timmins, one of the youths spent 133 days out of 210 days he was enrolled in the school in an isolation room, almost 63 percent of the time he was at Midwest Academy. The second boy spent 163 days out of the 233 days he was at the school in isolation, almost 50 percent of his stay at the school.

She told the jury both boys suffered dramatic weight loss while at the school, including one of the boys who had to be hospitalized the day after his mother took him out of school. Witnesses testified the child had to be fed intravenously because of malnutrition.

The school closed permanently in January 2016 following the execution of search warrants at the school by federal, state and local authorities after officials from the Iowa Department of Human Services received a call on its hotline indicating children were being abused by staff at the school.

Trane was arrested in September following a 19-month investigation into the abuse charges.

He originally spent 30 days in the Lee County jail before a friend posted a $50,000 cash-only bond on his behalf.

If convicted of the charges, he could be sentenced to a prison term not to exceed 17 years and must also register as a sex offender.