SANDPOINT - A Bonner County jury convicted a Moyie Springs woman on Friday of three counts of lewd and lascivious conduct but acquitted her of three additional counts.

The jury of six men and six women deliberated for two hours before reaching the verdicts in Heidi Julia Johnson's case. The verdicts came after four days of testimony in 1st District Court.

Johnson stifled tears as the verdicts were read. She was taken into custody after Judge Barbara Buchanan declined to hear defense arguments for Johnson's conditional release pending sentencing.

"These are very, very serious charges," Buchanan said.

"Very serious lies," Johnson's mother, Diane Lynn Hankey, said from the courtroom gallery.

Johnson, 32, is scheduled to be sentenced on June 15. She faces the prospect of a lifelong prison sentence.

A grand jury indicted Johnson and her husband, Ernest, on six counts each of lewd conduct last year. Heidi Johnson's parents, Frank and Diane Hankey, are also charged with joining in on the abuse of some of the children.

Ernest Johnson and the Hankeys pleaded not guilty and are awaiting trial.

Jurors on Friday convicted Heidi Johnson of molesting a girl between 2004 and 2012, when she was between the ages of 4 and 12. She was also convicted of sexually abusing the girl's younger brother and sister.

The jury, however, ruled that the state was unable to sustain its burden on three additional lewd conduct counts involving three other children.

Heidi Johnson planned to take the stand in her own defense on Friday, but reconsidered and invoked her right to remain silent.

Defense experts took the stand on the trial's final day and told jurors that the results of medical examinations were misinterpreted evidence of sexual abuse and that the children's statements to authorities showed signs of embellishment and exaggeration.

During his closing remarks to jurors, Chief Deputy Public Defender Dan Taylor implicated Ernest Johnson for the sexual abuse and his client was unfairly swept up in the grand jury's zeal to prosecute.

"There was something that was partially true that was blown out of proportion," said Taylor.

Bonner County Prosecutor Louis Marshall said the abuse was so routine that it became ingrained in the victims as a normal behavior. He also reminded jurors of how one of the children went from jovial to fearful when asked to identify her assailant while testifying.