Accused? Guilty - Part 10 of 41 part serial by Barbara C. Johnson
No Monotone, He
From the upper deck, Bea and Bill watched the boats slide across the water. It reminded Bill of an afternoon with Chloe.
“On Sunday, I’d put Chloe’s bike with the training wheels into the back of the car, her into the front, and head over to the East Maple Street playground,” he said, breaking the restful silence between them. “That was one of our weekend haunts. There were swings, a slide, and tennis and basketball courts there.”
Bea didn’t stir for fear of interrupting his mood.
“When Chloe was a toddler, she was afraid of going down the slide. I put her only halfway up and held her, so she’d go down slowly.” He paused, reminiscing. “Later I coaxed her to slide down from the top. I tried to be gentle about it. After a while, she raced up and whizzed down like every other kid.”
Bea just nodded.
“On the swings, she went back and forth between the “baby” and the “older kid” swings. “We became so excited when she rode all around the court without the training wheels.”
Bea noted his natural sense of timing and thought, He’s no monotone. She smiled ever so slightly.
“Then we picnicked there, near our favorite tree.”
Mother Dearest Stuff
After the break, Bill had a request. “Remember to ask Heather the basis for saying the games I played with Chloe were inappropriate. You know, there’s a limit as to what you can play in the same little room week after week. Chloe wasn’t interested in me reading books to her. She wanted to interact with me.”
Bea made a list of the things Heather found inappropriate, like uninhibited cat play and requests for clothing during the Saturday visits.
“And inappropriate, too, was your Ice Capades invitation. Apparently had Denise known your friend Debby’s name, she would’ve asked DSS to warn Debby about you.”
“More of her paranoia.”
“What was that about?”
“During a home visit, I gave Chloe a lipstick from Tasha. She’s Debby’s daughter. Around four years old.”
“Then what?”
“I told Chloe that Tasha wanted her to have it. Chloe loved it and said, ‘Oooh, thanks.’ Then I told her Tasha would like to have her and her mother come to the Ice Capades with us. Denise heard me. She was there. She looked at me with disgust.”
Bill frowned. “I thought it’d be nice for Chloe to see the ice show. So I invited Denise to come along too, because of this supervision thing. Anyway, she said, ‘It’s out of the question.’ Her voice was so harsh, it was close to sadistic.”
Bea shook her head to convey sympathy.
He said, “You know, when I saw Heather’s note about the Ice Capades, I was amazed. I couldn’t get over Denise saying she’d tell DSS to warn Debby of the possibility of my sexually abusing her child.”
Bill sighed. “I’m so frustrated by reading these notes. At one point, I approached Heather, and I thought we’d had a candid conversation. I told her I wanted to get a second opinion on whether sexual abuse occurred.
Granted Heather was opposed to the idea, but I still thought she was receptive to me, so I told her I was concerned that Chloe had no socialization because of Denise’s lifestyle. The Ice Capades invitation was simply me trying to provide Chloe with a chance to do something different and meet people. I also told her I wanted to take Chloe swimming on Saturdays. I’d sit in the gallery.
“Now I see that Heather salvaged those play letters I wrote to Chloe from the wastebasket, and put them in her file because she thought they were inappropriate.”
He shook his head. “How could I have read her so wrong? How can she have thought those letters were offensive?”
Bea assured Bill there was nothing offensive about the letters. She’d deal with them at trial. Bea lit another cigarette, took a puff, and hacked another pre-emphysemic cough. “I really should give these up, but I can’t.”
Nervous, Bill chuckled and inhaled air instead of nicotine. “What do those taste like? They look like little cigars. Are they?”
“No, they’re really fairly mild and slow-burning,” she managed to say as she began coughing again, and stubbed yet another cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray of half-smoked predecessors. “It’s a dirty habit, though,” she conceded when her hacking stopped. “I drop ashes on everything. My clothes smell of smoke. I smell of smoke.” Silence. “What the hell, I’m not entering a beauty contest.”
Tactfully, Bill said nothing.
“Back to work. My concerns are really about the statements attributed to Chloe. They change with each social worker. They’re going to yell, ‘She was in denial. It took her a while to feel comfortable talking about her abuse. That’s why her story became enhanced as time went on.’ But I think there’s something else going on here. It’s like a riddle unraveling: the social workers are looking at what the child is drawing, what colors she’s using, the type of play she chooses, what her animals do to each other, and so on.”
Then angrily, she said, “But no one is looking at what Chloe is not doing: the child has not expressed even one emotion that she felt during any of the alleged abusive acts. If she’s expressed emotions, you can’t tell it from these notes: none is recorded. Even the abusive acts themselves are described in the most superficial terms. The lack of emotion is the single-most convincing factor, I think, that the child is merely repeating what she’s heard in the child-victims groups or what she overheard Mommy saying or what she was led to say by Leavitt.”
“I must have picked up on their habit of looking at the superficial on some level,” Bill said with a growing grin, which surprised Bea. “Take a look at the next entry. ‘During visit father and Chloe played with markers and drew pictures. Father said he didn’t want the bad colors this time.’”
Both of them sat back and had a good laugh.
With some of the tension gone, Bea said, “We’ll be lucky if they don’t start helping Chloe develop new emotions to testify to.”
Bill agreed.
“Let’s see what we can ferret out of these Spring entries,” Bea said.
“The rules, Denise’s rules.” His exasperation was pronounced. “Everything leads to and from Denise’s rules. Don’t whisper. Don’t touch.”
“Denise’s used the no-touching rule to her advantage. It’s a big-C tool over Heather, you, Chloe, all of you. Control by progressive manipulation.”
“That’s what I can’t forgive her for. The way she’s intimidating Chloe with the no-touching business.”
“What do you know about the no-whispering rule?”
“Not much. I think she’s afraid I’ll try to whisper to Chloe not to testify against me.”
Bea nodded.
“This is all Mommie Dearest stuff,” he said.
“More than I think we know,” Bea said. Bill, I think Denise has been jealous of Chloe for years. And she would’ve been jealous of any child you guys had. That may be why she didn’t want to get pregnant. Remember her depo: you didn’t pay her any attention. I won’t use her jealousy at trial because I’ll never be able to prove it. Just remember you heard it here first.”
Fai Lathee, Ela Vrathee
Bea escaped for an hour or so by burrowing into a bright orange chenille beanbag with a good book about a golem carved out of ground of clay. The peasant who created the golem came to love it as a son more and more deeply as the golem began to develop human emotion. Had a dybbuk, a wandering soul, entered and possessed the humanlike form? The question the novel raised was not whether a golem could experience feeling, but whether the clay golem’s feelings were purer than a gestated human’s.
What a luxury to think about things that had no impact on her everyday existence. Activity in the nearby slip had woken her to reality, but her brain lingered a bit where it had been. The golem was still trusting; it hadn’t learned betrayal. It was, in comparison to a sophisticated man, a wimp; it did what it was told; it did not question authority; it had no guile. In some ways it reminded her of Bill: naïve and vulnerable and physically strong, except Bill was totally powerless to change his life at this moment. The golem could, at least, walk away. Walking away from his daughter was the last thing Bill wanted to do.
She rolled out of her soft, comfortable nest onto her knees and then made it to her feet. She stretched. Just one deposition to go in the Abernathy case. Hallelujah! Time to celebrate. Well, almost time to celebrate. At least Hugh’s back. She needed him to relieve some of her accumulated stress, but she was angry at herself for having become so reliant on him for that relief.
Still, she was prepared to make the most of it. She made her way to the galley. There, she cleaned some potatoes and threw them in the microwave. She broke apart a garlic bulb, peeled the cloves, put them on a wooden board, and chopped away. Every once in a while, she scraped a few chopped cloves into a mortar and ground them with a pestle. When finished, she’d have scordalia (garlic, potatoes, brought to a whipped-like consistency with glugs of olive oil), topped with chopped onions, cheese-filled potato crusts, crusty fresh breads, spotlessly shined apples ready to be peeled and sliced, and retsina ready for Hugh.
Fai lathee, ela vrathee. Eat oil, the aphrodisiac of choice on Mount Olympus, night is coming. All lusty Greek women serve their men significant amounts of olive oil before a night of serious intentions and desire. Understanding the signal, their men would pour even more fresh virgin oil over the onion-covered scordalia and heartily partake of the appetizers. This calorically voluptuous fare was the Greek counterpart of the Franks’ Bread, Wine, and Thee.
At the very least, Hugh would be scared stiff by Bea’s aggression, but he would rise to the occasion. It was part of Bea’s ritual of welcoming him back from the briny. His brooding temperament muted by weeks of competition with energetic young males in the prime of their romantic beings, he would not only devotedly accede to her desire, but would also martyr himself, albeit not enthusiastically, to the consuming pyre of Bea.
Intemperance Justified
Another trip to court. Ruth Stanton, Denise’s therapist, was interviewed in chambers by still another family court judge, one who’d never heard argument on this case. He didn’t allow Bea in while he looked at Stanton’s file.
But the trip was almost worth it: Bea did get to see Stanton sitting on a courtroom pew. She was historical Salem: black dress, round white lace-edged collar, long fitting sleeves, white lace-edged cuffs. And she was “primarily” a treater of substance abuse. Remarkable!
“Your Honor, the alleged events out of which the criminal prosecution arose are the same alleged events which are at issue in the civil proceeding. I intend to call Bill Abernathy as a witness at his criminal trial, and I know of no information discoverable from him in this case that the Commonwealth might attempt to use by innuendo against him in the criminal case.
“What I fear, however, is the mischief that could be done from an innocent statement or document. It could affect the criminal case. It’s protection from that potential mischief Mr. Abernathy seeks. I need to protect him from having to answer any questions in the divorce case until the criminal action is decided.
“Your Honor, Bill Abernathy does not intend to invoke his right against self-incrimination in this civil case. Were he to invoke the Fifth, there’d be a presumption he committed the crime he’s accused of. Not wanting that presumption to be made, he seeks a protective order here only until the criminal case is resolved. Also, his right against self-incrimination would be put in serious jeopardy if an inadvertent line of questioning is begun by Mr. Aguilar and then later possibly if this court should deem he waived his right against self-incrimination.
“And a protective order will also not prejudice Mrs. Abernathy’s ability to litigate this action, for an adverse inference is not by itself sufficient to meet her burden of proof and she may obtain discovery from sources other than her husband. The order will merely protect the rights of Bill Abernathy to fair criminal process.”
The motions were taken under advisement. Judges do that when they don’t want counsel to slither down to possibly intemperate argument inspired by an unfavorable decision. The decision usually comes in the next day’s mail.
While riding out rough weather, Bea was intemperate. No one heard her.
Hazardous Waste
What is this case all about?” asked Paul McGill, the judge to whom Leslie Calhoun’s case was assigned when it was remanded to Concord District Court about a mile up the road from Walden Pond.
Bea explained. “This case is about an environmental consulting firm acting on the wrong side of the law. The company retaliated against a group of six women by alleging they wanted to take down the company. These women were geologists, staff scientists—all very intelligent women whose consciousness had been raised over the years.” Bea continued describing the case, emphasizing Leslie’s pariah-hood and her damages.
Judge McGill was the progeny of a white mother and a black father who divorced. Thanks to his mother’s boyfriend—according to rumor—Paul graduated from the Mount Hermon school and Harvard University, but having dark skin, he awoke some consternation by the lily white town of Concord when he was appointed First Justice of its district court. The apple did not fall from the tree when he became the husband of an Irish lass—also a lawyer—from South Boston.
Pitbull, being his usual self, argued to knock out Leslie’s case before it ever got a chance to go to trial. Leslie had not been wrongfully discharged, he argued. “She left her job at the company not because of a hostile working environment, but to cash in on an offer of a salary double that which she was receiving.”
Playing to her audience, Bea said, “Your Honor, it’s important to understand who Leslie Calhoun is. She is an absolutely beautiful, auburn-haired woman who has reached the big four-o. She’s articulate and brilliant, a geologist. Her husband was black, a baseball player. She wanted to have children, but he didn’t want biracial children so they got divorced. She had no time to wait. Nature’s clock was ticking. She still happens to be friendly with him, however. He’s in Texas at the moment.
“As time went along, she met Kurt Manheim, a brilliant young man in physics from Wellesley, and Leslie came East with him, from California to Massachusetts. Being a perennial student, he wasn’t ready to have children. But she was living with him and became enveloped by his parents, his sister, his family.
“Now defense counsel has argued Leslie Calhoun wanted to go back to California for the big money. That’s not true. The money her new job offered just shows how undervalued she was here. That’s all it shows, because it was less important to her than her relationship with Kurt Manheim.
“When she left for California, Manheim felt abandoned and didn’t forgive her for leaving. She had forever lost him as the potential father of her children. That is an unliquidated damage, to be decided by judge or jury.
“Now defense counsel wrote Kurt Manheim, and that letter you have is a copy of the letter Manheim wrote in response to defense counsel. He writes of the stress Leslie was under before she left for California. When she left, she didn’t know why she was being isolated; she didn’t know why people were avoiding her. She didn’t know any of the things the company had done until a year and a half later when an investigator from the Department of Labor, alerted by some other woman to the discrimination taking place at the company, called and told her.
“Nevertheless, before she left, she said, ‘I can’t last here.’ She had all kinds of stress and was quite ill. She’d been hazzed and there is a possible nexus between that and her hospital stay. Those are only some of the bases of her unliquidated damage claims.”
“What is hazzed?” the judge asked.
“Hazzed is when a person has been exposed to hazardous waste. It goes to the safety and health issues of which Leslie complained to her supervisor. In this case, the company was not providing the proper protective clothing for people who worked in the field. Leslie Calhoun was one of them.”
After Bea iterated defense counsel’s misconduct, working outside the rules of civil procedure, and misrepresentations to court, the judge turned his attention to the issue of discovery.
“The bottom line is, Your Honor, I want the court to allow me to conduct discovery on behalf of my client. I’ve been denied the opportunity to conduct discovery. It is absolutely remarkable. I am entitled—”
McGill asked her, “Specifically what documents are you saying that you need to address?”
“The list of documents I want is attached to the motion.”
“How do they relate to wrongful discharge?”
Bea told him.
He took both motions under advisement.
Bea hoped he’d not already made up his mind against her and was simply taking the motions under advisement so she wouldn’t erupt in his courtroom. After seeing judges assist the defendants in not producing the documents by giving them five protective orders, she’d insist to Hugh that she was not becoming paranoid.
Cat and Mouse
One hour into the deposition, it became clear that Heather, a visitation supervisor, had accepted as 100 percent true not only Carol Tracy’s original accusations, which had been haunting Bill for over a year, but also every other conclusion reached by all the social workers assigned to the case.
She’s myopic. Bea looked across the table at the slim, forty-ish woman dressed in a little white blouse with a pointed collar and flat mother-of-pearl buttons down the front. Heather learned that the intake worker at the Center had not requested a copy of Chloe’s medical evaluation. But then Heather hadn’t even bothered to find out whether a medical evaluation ever existed.
When Bea pressed her, Heather recalled reading the medical evaluation, but didn’t remember specifics of it. Bea thought the answer remarkable. If it existed, the medical evaluation would be the single-most important piece of evidence the government had against Bill.
The danger was what Heather put in her reports and whether a court would accept the reports as evidence and whether a court would allow her to testify. Bea needed to neutralize Heather.
“Realizing charges have been brought against the father for raping a child, didn’t it strike you odd there was no medical evaluation?”
“Objection,” MSPCC Attorney John McFadden said. No, that's wrong. Asking a question about a deponent’s state of mind is permissible.
Aguilar didn’t join in the objection. He was relying on McFadden to protect not only Heather but also Denise. They had probably discussed strategy before they came aboard the tug.
Rather than fight, Bea turned her attention to Hilda Crowley’s Victims of Sexual Addiction group. Denise wanted to file a complaint about the group so other women would not be referred there; she’d been humiliated by the questions she’d been asked. Chloe went to the group with her mother, but was in a room with the children. Mother was with the adults.
“Everything I learned about Chloe’s disclosures came from Tracy’s report—and from Denise, after Chloe had attended the group meeting at the rape-crisis center,” Heather said.
“Is it true that your notes reflect only what Mommy told you?”
“Yes.”
“So Mommy could have told you, ‘Chloe said Daddy hurt me so much I’m going to jump over the Brooklyn Bridge,’ and you still would have put it in the notes, isn’t that true?”
“I don’t know if I’d write that.”
“Because that would be hard to believe, wouldn’t it be?”
“It would be important to discuss that.”
“But you put in the report this accusation because Mommy said it, isn’t that true?”
“It was important I include it. I have no reason to believe Mother would make this up.”
“You’ve never requested a psychological study of Mom, have you?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“So you really don’t know whether this mom, who’s telling you this, is paranoid—and you wouldn’t have any way of knowing that, would you?”
“I have no reason to believe Mother would make this up.”
“You have no reason to believe that Mother would not make this up either, do you?”
“She’s always been believable and consistent.”
“That’s because you believe mothers who come in with accusations, isn’t that true?”
“That’s no reason for me not to believe her.”
“Later on the same day of the conversation you had with Denise Abernathy, you said Chloe had a meeting with Daddy, and was not fearful of him. In fact, she was glad to see him, is that true?”
“Yes.”
“And Chloe and Father took their shoes off and played several games together, isn’t that true?”
“Yes.”
“While bowling, the father was the pin-setter and Chloe was the bowler, isn’t that true?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And during that time, Father was very child-like?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What you mean by that is, he just participated in the play enthusiastically with Chloe?”
“He got on the floor to play with her.”
“So he got down on the floor and played with her, and that made him child-like?”
“It was the way he was playing— He was very involved in the play, and that made him child-like.”
“Would that make Mr. McFadden child-like, if he had a child who was about the same age as Chloe Abernathy and got down on the floor and played with the child, and was enthusiastic about the play, would that make Mr. McFadden child-like?” Bea was desperately trying to get Heather to demonstrate or admit her bias, her prejudgment.
“I don’t know.”
“If two men got down on the floor and played with their children in an enthusiastic way, why would one be child-like and not the other?”
“My answer to that— I observed him— I observed the sessions between Chloe and her father. I was there in the room.”
“Well, we know that. We know you were there and observed it, but you haven’t answered the question. Why would there be a difference if Mr. McFadden and Mr. Abernathy were doing the exact same thing on the floor, playing with a child of the same age, and both playing with a bowling ball?”
Heather didn’t answer.
“Why would you consider Mr. McFadden not child-like? Is it because he’s getting a little sparse up there? Why would you conclude that one is child-like and the other isn’t?”
“I really can’t give you an answer on that.” Does she not see her bias or does she not want to admit it? The Age of Hysterical Feminism has infected Heather.
“Chloe drew a picture for you of her house, and she called it a cat house because it had ears, and then she said it was a kingdom. And you wrote in some detail the description of this picture and put it in the casefile, isn’t that true?”
“That’s correct.”
“Did you come to some conclusion about the drawing?”
“No.” Good, at least now she won’t be able to fabricate a reason for saving it if she testifies at trial... or claim the drawing indicated sexual abuse occurred.
“So, there’s no hidden meaning there?”
“No, I simply observe the visits and describe what goes on.”
“So, they could almost replace you with a video tape recorder there and record the entire session, couldn’t they?”
“They could record it in the same way that I record it, but my job function is to observe interaction and to protect her from her father while she’s there.”
“Has there ever been occasion where you felt she needed protection from him?”
“The interaction has always been appropriate.” A simple No would have done it.
“At some point, Mother devised some rules, didn’t she?”
“Yes. No whispering during the visits. That rule came about after a visit when I took a telephone call, and while I was on the phone, Father whispered something inappropriate to Chloe.” Heather looked down and shuffled through her notes, which somehow had managed to stay put on her flat lap since shortly after the deposition began. She finally answered, “He whispered to Chloe that he cried at night.”
Unexpectedly, Bea’s impatience swelled to anger. Curious. Am I angry because she read the answer? Then, suddenly, as she snapped to, a grin appeared on her face. “Do you know what Chloe said to him that prompted that remark?”
“No.”
“Did you consider perhaps they whispered because they didn’t want to disturb you while you were on the phone?”
Heather looked down to her notes and found she hadn’t written that. “I can’t answer that. I don’t know why.”
“But it’s possible they could have simply been trying to be considerate of you?”
“I don’t know.”
Whore! Bea grinned again. The others were probably wondering why.
As Bea asked each question, Heather appeared determined to find the answer in her notes. She’d shuffle her papers. Occasionally McFadden would ask Bea for the date so Heather could get onto the same page as Bea was on.
Finally, Bea was provoked into saying, “If you remember, don’t go back to your notes.” Bea waited again.
When Bea moved on, Aguilar objected. “She hasn’t answered the other question. I insist she be allowed to answer the question.” Then, predictably, he went into sparring mode for several minutes.
“No. If she has to look up and read the answer to every question I ask her, we’ll have Ms. Bruce back here for an entire week. None of us wants to do that.” Bea could hear some action along the wharf and in the neighboring slips and she wanted to say bye to a few friends before they left to season elsewhere.
“I agree. Let’s go off the record for one minute,” McFadden suggested.
“Let’s continue,” Bea said. She was tired of McFadden’s oft-broken promises. Although polite and not a table-pounder like Aguilar, McFadden had no credit with her. Ironically, Aguilar had acquired some.
When Heather said Chloe displayed both aggressive and sexual themes with her father, Bea asked her how her play differed from any of the other children whom she observed. She didn’t answer.
Bea then asked who the children were with whom Chloe was being compared. They were not alleged to be sexually abused. In fact, Chloe and Bill’s visits were the first and only visits Heather had supervised between an alleged victim and an alleged perpetrator. Then what the hell is she comparing?
“Is aggression something that would indicate there’d been sexual abuse?”
Heather read that it could be. “A child who’s sexually abused might have low self-esteem, but I don’t know whether a child with low self-esteem would also be aggressive.”
“You said she displayed sexual themes. What were those sexual themes?”
“On different occasions Chloe would play with dolls in a dollhouse and take off the doll’s clothes, and she— I remember her saying she wanted to take the doll’s clothes off. I don’t recall anything specific about what she did at that particular time.” Removing a doll’s clothes is sexual?
“When you’re supervising a visit of other children, and they’re playing with a dollhouse, do they take the clothes off the doll?”
“I haven’t supervised any other children with the dollhouse.”
Bea paused to think. She looked up over her bifocals at Heather and saw the slim woman devoid of energy. Unhappy. Miserable, I’ll bet. Probably divorced. Probably a single mother. No hope. No way out. Trapped in loneliness. Sees darkness even where there should be light. “Do you have any children?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Male or female?” One of each, sixteen and fourteen years old. Her daughter, she emphasized, had had a dollhouse, but she didn’t remember whether her daughter took the clothes off her dolls.
“If she had, would you have said she was displaying a sexual theme?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you did here?”
“In this case I did.”
Heather was unable to name any emotions that Chloe displayed while supposedly disclosing sexual abuse. Her failure put into question MSPCC’s written goal to help “Chloe cope with her emotions of having been sexually abused.” It was like saying, “We’ll give you aspirin to take now because you’ve been walking outside in the rain and you might later get a cold.” Bea concluded this wasn’t like looking for the needle in the haystack. This was looking for a needle that wasn’t there.
Denise told Heather she didn’t like Bill asking her to get a shirt for him from upstairs. It made Denise feel uncomfortable.
“Do you think it was an unreasonable request where the man still had some clothes there in the house?”
“I can’t say. I can’t give an opinion on that. I wasn’t there. “
“Would you be inclined to tell Mrs. Abernathy that was reasonable or unreasonable?”
“I feel that whatever is in Chloe’s best interest is what would be reasonable.”
What interest would Chloe have in Bill’s shirt? None. Bea was getting worked up.
Whenever asked whether she thought something was reasonable or unreasonable, Heather didn’t have an opinion or didn’t remember. Nowhere did she question Denise’s judgment. Nowhere did she consider whether Denise’s elevator went all the way to the top. Heather simply believed Mom because she was Mom.
Aguilar joined in and objected and then the three lawyers began overtalking each other. Bea was not intimidated and let Aguilar and McFadden know it.
Aguilar muttered, “I’ll walk out.” His lips bled white.
Bea thought, Please do!
In contrast, forever calm and in control, McFadden said, “Let’s go off the record.”
Off the record, Bea vented... moving on from Heather’s evasiveness to negligent hiring and retention.
Not up to snuff for the responsible job she had. Eventually, McFadden instructed Heather to answer the question and to acknowledge the difference between remembering and knowing.
“Have you ever said to Bill Abernathy something like, ‘I’ve heard all about the visits from your wife.
Can you give me your version?’”
“No. I’ve asked ‘How are the visits going?’”
“Have you ever questioned whether the facts the mother told you might not be accurate?
“I have no reason to question them.”
“Have you had any reason to question Mr. Abernathy’s iteration of the facts as he’s described a visit to you?”
“No, I haven’t questioned what he’s said about the visits.”
“Has there ever come a time when they each told you a different version?”
“Yes, they may be describing the same visit but in a different way.”
“What did he say and what did she say?”
“I can’t recall the exact words.”
Heather did remember, however, hearing from Denise that Bill was wearing shorts and that his organ was peeping out every once in a while.
“Did you believe his organ stuck out from his shorts?”
“I have no reason to believe the story was fabricated. There would be no reason for that.” Of course, there was. Leavitt had sent a 51A complaint to DSS. And the DA was still stuck for a specific date of abuse. This incident would have given them a date.
“When he said, ‘My shorts were not improper, and I wasn’t hanging out from under my shorts,’ did you have reason to disbelieve him?”
“I was more inclined to believe Mrs. Abernathy.”
“Why?”
“Because she was there.”
“Well, so was he. He was wearing the shorts.”
“Because it had an effect on Chloe.”
“Well, you don’t know that, do you?”
“I have no reason to believe Chloe would lie about it.”
“But Chloe never spoke to you about the shorts did she?”
“No, she never did.”
“And Chloe never spoke to anybody else at MSPCC about the shorts did she?”
“No, she never did.”
“Didn’t the fact that the 51A was never substantiated help you to believe Mr. Abernathy?”
“I still have to go back to the statement, I have no reason to believe Chloe would lie.”
“Were you ever sexually abused?”
“No, Ma’am.”
“But you were more willing to believe Mrs. Abernathy rather than Mr. Abernathy?”
“I’m just saying I have no reason to believe Chloe would lie.”
“But Chloe never said to you or to the DSS investigator that she saw her father’s penis out of his shorts. It was only Denise’s word that Chloe ever said anything. I just asked you a yes or no question: ‘You were more willing to believe Mrs. Abernathy rather than Mr. Abernathy, isn’t that true?”
“Yes.”
“Can you say why?”
“Because she’s always been truthful in the past.”
“Well, you don’t know that, do you, really?”
“To me, she’s always been truthful.”
“You were never at an event that Mrs. Abernathy told you about, were you?”
“That’s correct.”
“So basically you’ve believed Mrs. Abernathy. Whether or not you knew it was true, you just believed her?”
“I’ve believed her because she has always been truthful in the past, and been consistent with everything she said.”
“Has Mr. Abernathy ever not been truthful to you?”
“I have not spoken with Mr. Abernathy as frequently as Mrs. Abernathy.”
“You spoke to Mr. Abernathy every week at the visits?”
“I see him, but we don’t have conversation.” And she’d spoken to him on another few limited occasions at her office.
“On the occasions he has spoken to you, have you ever had reason to believe he wasn’t honest with you?”
“No.”
“So why would you then believe Mrs. Abernathy was being more honest than Mr. Abernathy?”
“Because Mrs. Abernathy has always been consistent in the past.”
“When has Mr. Abernathy not been consistent?”
“There hasn’t been a specific time that I can recall him being inconsistent, but—”
“Why then, if both are consistent, and you have known both to be honest with you, why would you believe one over the other?”
“I don’t believe it’s a matter of believing one or the other.”
“You just said so yourself.”
“I don’t think I can answer the question.”
Heather began talking in circles again. Bea’s patience was running out along with the morning.
“Let’s take a quick break.” Bea was upset that Heather was not only trying to cover her bias, she was trying to cover her ignorance and her ass.
“Good idea,” McFadden said.
Aguilar got up without saying anything.
