I Speak For This Child: True Stories of a Child Advocate (39 page)

“When in the summer was it?”

“I remember
The Thorn Birds
was on television because he’d let me watch it if I’d do it.”

“There were a lot of people living in your house. When were you ever alone?”

“In the middle of the night.”

“Didn’t anyone wake up?”

“Rich and Cory are very sound sleepers. Dad has to use the squirt gun to get them up in the morning.”

“It is hard to wake you up too?” She nodded. “But he could get you up for sex?”

“Yeah, like you can really sleep when someone is doing it to you,” she responded with a nasty edge.

“Didn’t anyone in your family suspect anything?” Walt Hilliard questioned.

“My brother, Rich, did, but I told him nothing happened because if he knew the truth he would have killed my father.”

Walt Hilliard took a few steps backward, then consulted his notes. “Do you like boys?”

Beat. “I guess …”

“Do you like having sex with boys?”

“Objection!” Grace said with a tinge of disgust.

“Sustained,” ruled Judge Donovan.

Then Walt Hilliard asked when she first had sex with her father and she indicated it was that afternoon at the marine shop. “What about when you were in the tool shed?” She said that was different. He began a series of questions relating to discrepancies in her testimony from the early written statements and cleverly tried to confuse her, but she had done her homework. He did, however, annoy her enough so her polite responses took on an edginess.

Mr. Hilliard began reading quotes from Alicia’s deposition. Grace Chandler objected to bringing in this evidence, which wasn’t in the file.

“It was filed June twenty-eighth,” Mr. Hilliard stated and showed her the date stamped on the paper.

I sagged. Grace’s “lucky break” had been a clerical oversight.

Grace’s cheeks flamed. She asked to approach the bench to explain she had never received a copy. The judge gave her a short recess to read the transcribed deposition over. I took Alicia back to Grace’s office for a Coke. We watched Grace pace back and forth flipping the pages and reading worrisome passages aloud. Normally imperturbable, the prosecutor seemed genuinely shaken.

When the trial resumed, Walt Hilliard read from Alicia’s conflicting written statements. “In this one you said that you had sex with your father ‘about once a week from the age of five through nine’ and after that as often as three times a week.”

“I meant he touched me once a week.”

“But that is not what you reported under oath,” Walt Hilliard said, waving the transcribed deposition in front of her, “is it?”

Grace Chandler objected to this needling but the judge allowed it.

Walt Hilliard came back at her even more aggressively. “And when you were nine? What happened then?”

“He had sex with me.”

“So what you wrote in your statement was not what you meant?”

“No.”

“Then it was a lie, wasn’t it?”

Walt Hilliard backed away so the jury could see Alicia’s distraught face. In a studied gesture of kindness, he gave her a moment to catch herself, while he pretended to look at his notes.

“You explained how your father had sex with you for the first time in the bathroom at his place of business, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Can you describe the bathroom?” Alicia mentioned the bathtub and the woodstove. “Isn’t that the bathroom at your house?”

“No, it is the one at the old marine shop in town.”

Walt shrugged, then continued. “You testified that ‘my father pulled my pants down around my ankles,’ is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Did you step out of your panties or did they stay around your ankles?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Oh, now you’re not sure! Do you remember what you said he did to you?” He looked at his notes. “You said, ‘he jammed his thing inside of me.’ Then you told us that ‘thing’ meant his penis. Now I want you to tell me about his penis. How did it feel to you? Was it hard or was it soft?”

“Soft.”

“How could he penetrate you with a soft penis?”

“First it was soft, then it got harder.”

“Oh, so now it got harder? Which was it?”

“Both, but it was from the rear, so I couldn’t see and I was too young to know exactly.”

“But now you know more about these things?”

“I should by now.” The painful knowledge wrought by that familiarity was etched on Alicia’s face.

“You say that your father had routine sex with you as often as once or twice a week, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me exactly what you allege your father did to you.”

“He would go in and out until he came. You know what that means?” Alicia finished with her Bardot pout.

“Did he try forceful, hard, pounding sex with you?”

“Yes.”

“And nobody heard what was going on in that small house with so many people sleeping nearby?”

“I guess not.”

“Didn’t you know that all you had to do was say the magic words ‘sexual abuse’ and HRS would come and remove you from your father?”

“I wasn’t sure what would happen.”

“But you said that your brother had been taken away before, so you must have known you could get out of your house if you claimed abuse. Were you angry with your father the day you decided to tell someone?”

“No.”

“Who is your best friend?”

“Dawn Leigh Pruitt.”

“Where is she living now?”

“Clearwater.”

“Where did Dawn Leigh Pruitt live before she moved?”

Alicia described a section of the county not far from Stevenson Groves. After some more rapid-fire questioning she admitted that she had been upset because her father had not facilitated a visit between the girls.

Then, unexpectedly, Walt Hilliard excused the witness.

Grace Chandler returned and entered an exhibit into evidence. It was the picture of the bathroom in the marine shop. She had Alicia verify that this was where the rape had occurred. Then she asked, “Were you ever afraid of your father hurting you physically?”

“Yes. He has hit me with a belt and with his hand.”

“Do you still love your father?”

“Yes.”

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Red Stevenson straightening from his hunched-over position. He was shaking his head from side to side, as though he could not believe what had just happened.

The proceedings adjourned for lunch. Alicia’s testimony had taken almost two hours, but she had held up beautifully. Ruth brought Alicia, Rich, and me sandwiches to Grace’s office. At one point Rich asked Alicia to pass him a drink and called her “Janet.” She teased him about it, but he didn’t seem to realize his mistake. Cory, who didn’t want to talk to his brother and sister, ate in another room with Marta Castillo and Mitzi Keller, and I spent the second half of the break with him.

As I walked back into the courtroom, Sterling Bailey touched my arm. “I called my editor. We won’t be printing the family name in future editions.”

I scribbled Lillian a note announcing the little victory. She squeezed my hand.

The prosecution called Dr. Colette Boggs, the court-appointed psychologist who had evaluated the three Stevenson children. Dr. Boggs discussed incest in general, some of the syndromes that victims present, including self-mutilation and low self-esteem, and how she diagnosed these characteristics in Alicia.

“Why don’t girls like Alicia Stevenson tell anyone of the abuse?” Grace Chandler asked the expert.

“One reason is the fear of being stigmatized. Although we try to assure the victim that she has done nothing wrong, she may feel that because she participated she was somehow at fault. Also, as soon as the disclosure is made, the victim will be blamed for the subsequent trauma to the family. She also feels responsible for the fate of the offender, which is why some never reveal the secret. Other times children who have been violated for many years don’t realize that something is terribly wrong until they are teenagers developing outside relationships and their own moral position.”

Dr. Boggs answered questions about what she knew about the women who served in the capacity of Alicia’s stepmother and pointed out that the history of transience gave Alicia the feeling that nobody could be trusted. Next the psychologist’s testimony turned to defining posttraumatic stress disorder and Alicia’s presentation of some of these symptoms. “We describe the victim’s response in terms of freeze, flight, and fight. Initially, when a sexual attack occurs, the victim’s brain pumps adrenal hormones, and these act like an anesthetic so that the incident can be endured without an overwhelming sensation of pain.”

“Would this result in someone not recalling an initial sexual penetration as excruciatingly painful?” Grace asked.

“Yes.”

“Does that mean she did not experience pain at the time?”

“No, although her sensations may have been muted as a coping response. However. later, even a small amount of pain associated with a similar event can set off a traumatic response far more intense than is warranted by the actual situation.”

Colette Boggs went on to describe the flight response as one used to minimize anxiety.

“How does Alicia exhibit this response?”

“When she is asked to recall unpleasant memories, she seems to fall asleep or dissociates from the discussion at hand.”

Dr. Boggs testified that the fight response ranges from temper tantrums to more aggressive acting out. When asked why Alicia permitted so many years of abuse, she explained that Alicia’s passivity was “a form of accommodation.”

“Is this common?”

“Very much so. Some children either deny the abuse occurred at all or, even after it is out in public, recant the confession if pressured to do so.”

Watching the impassive jury, I suspected that Dr. Boggs’s technical explanation was not hitting its mark.

After Mr. Hilliard’s brief cross-examination of the psychologist, Deputy Moline from the sex crimes division was called to the stand. He answered the prosecutor’s questions about the night he responded to a report of sexual battery.

“How were you notified?”

“By an abuse report that had been phoned into the child abuse hotline.”

“What time was that?”

“After eleven P.M.”

“Did you arrest anyone that evening?”

“No, but we did take the child into protective custody.”

“What time did you arrive at the police station?” Grace asked.

“After midnight.”

“What was Alicia Stevenson’s emotional state?”

“She was trembling and crying.”

“Did you have her write a statement describing the abuse?”

“Yes.”

Grace handed the officer the statement and confirmed that it was the same document. “What time was it written?”

“At two-forty-five A.M.”

In the cross-examination Walt Hilliard asked the deputy, “How would you describe Alicia’s state of mind?”

“Tired, upset.”

“Was she confused?”

“Not that I could tell.”

“Did she want to leave her father’s house?”

“Not at first.”

“How did you convince her?”

“We told her that we had orders to remove her for her own safety.”

“Did she think she needed that protection?”

“Not at that time.”

The next witness was Richard Leroy Stevenson, Jr.

He came in the room escorted by Mitzi, and because he was technically another child-victim witness, the courtroom was cleared again.

“He needs lots of reassurance, or he’s going to lose it,” Mitzi said. “He’s been a basket case in the hall. I told him to watch you, and you would nod that he was doing fine.”

Under Grace Chandler’s gentle questioning, Rich did fairly well. He explained that his father had often been violent toward him, which is why HRS had placed him out of the home when he was very young. He described being slapped in the face so hard it left a “handprint mark.” He then admitted that he had seen his father having sex with his sister.

“Tell us what you saw?” Grace asked.

“I was in the living room sleeping on the couch and my father went out to the porch where my sister was sleeping, carried her into the dining room, and made her lie down on the floor.”

“What did you see your father do to your sister, Alicia?”

“He—you know—had sex with her.”

“Did you hear any words?”

“Just groans from them both.”

“What did you do?”

“I closed my eyes and lay very still, cause I thought I was going to be sick.”

“Did your father ever do anything like that to your brother?”

“I didn’t see it if he did.”

“Did he ever do it to you?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell me when that was?”

Walt Hilliard tried to object, but the judge let Rich respond. He told the story of his father masturbating him in the marine shop and said there had been other times before that.

“Has he done it since?”

“No!” Rich said so loudly I flinched.

Grace Chandler turned the witness over to the defense.

“You love your sister, don’t you?” Walt Hilliard began. Rich agreed. “Have you ever taken any drugs?”

“I had crack once, and cocaine twice, some LSD. I was with someone who did needles, but I didn’t want to.”

“Anything else?”

“I did roaches twice, you know, marijuana.”

“How old are you, Rich?”

“Seventeen.”

“Are you married?”

“Yes, I got myself married in the summer.”

“How did you get permission to get married?”

“My father helped me.”

“Didn’t you make a deal with him?”

“No.”

“May I remind you that you are under oath to tell the truth. What did you promise your father?”

“I can’t say. I want to take five.”

“You want to stop for five minutes?”

“No, you know, not five, the Fifth.”

Lillian and I glanced at each other, surprised at what the boy knew to say.

“You don’t want to incriminate yourself by answering my question, is that it?” Walt Hilliard retorted facetiously.

“Yes.”

“What is your wife’s name?” Walt asked, without hiding the smirk on his face.

“Janet Stevenson.”

“Where did you meet her?”