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| Part Three (3) |
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The young boy who had just left had acted out big time during the visit and made a mess. Because he hadn’t cleaned it up before his mother came to pick him up, Heather was doing it for him when the phone rang.
Nearly tripping over Legos on the floor, she hurried to her desk to answer the phone.
It was Chloe’s abuse therapist, Roberta Leavitt. In almost the same words as Denise had used, she told Heather about the whispering.
“I spoke to her already. I thought I settled her down.”
"I was concerned with protecting Chloe,” Roberta said.
“How could she? Of course, I’m concerned about Chloe. How can she say that I’m not?”
“She can and she did. Look, I have a release from Denise to speak to her therapist, Ruth Stanton. I’ll try to reach her. Maybe she can suggest something. Let’s say I call you back sometime next week.”
“Thanks, Roberta,” Heather said, sounding relieved.
Off the phone, Heather was more concerned about her job. She didn’t need problems; she had two hungry teenagers to support. Her husband had long since abandoned them, which made for a trouble-free divorce and no custody fight. After that, she had to go back to school for her master’s. That was a struggle. She was lonely enough trying to bring up the kids, keeping house, and working. She knew she was somewhat dowdy looking. Her ex had always said as much. “Go get your hair done. Put on some lipstick. Look at me when I get home as if you’re happy to see me.”
She never did... get her hair done or put on lipstick or look happy to see him. She didn’t want to look attractive to him. She hated being in bed with him. She didn’t want to look exciting to him. Later, unexciting became a way of life. When he vanished, searching for what he excitement lost, she couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to share it with him.
If he ever reappeared and wanted to see the kids again, she doubtless wouldn’t let him near them, never mind let him talk to them.
16 - Report from Hell
Negotiating nonstop with lawyers to get the critical documents, Bea ultimately received the 51A report, which had started it all, but it was redacted: there were white spaces where, she imagined, the name of the mandatory reporter and the descriptions of anything the reporter did should have been. And the 51A itself was, of course, not written by the mandatory reporter. It appeared to be “the story as told to” some intake person at DSS. Substantively, the 51A was a report from Hell:
The daughter (5 years old) used her “talking hand” and stated, “I have a secret.”
“Daddy doesn’t want me to tell the secret.”
Female (5) said sometimes Daddy would punch her in the stomach and kick her.
Female 5 showed ______ these acts on dolls ______.
She also said she plays with _______.
He begins by touching her foot, moves up to her knees, hangs her upside down. While she is upside down, he puts his fingers in her “bottom.”
I asked her if her bum was the same as her “bottom.”
She said “No.”
She pointed to her vagina when I asked where her bottom was. I asked her if the only time Daddy touches her bottom is when they are playing like this?
She said _______________________ discussed her daughter’s low self-esteem, daughter calls herself a “Thing.”
“Sometimes he throws me on the bed. He touches my face, my chest, and my bottom.” ______________ these acts on the anatomically correct dolls. She did.
Female (5) also stated Daddy had a virus in his penis, and doesn’t taste good.
__________ asked her what doesn’t taste good? She said, “Daddy’s pee pee doesn’t taste good.”
__________ said, “Daddy touches your bottom with his fingers?”
She said, “Yes.”
I asked her if daddy touches her bottom with any other part of his body.
She said, “Daddy touches my bottom with his penis” and “Daddy puts his penis in my mouth.”
Her father also makes her touch his penis with her fingers. All these acts were shown on the anatomically correct dolls as well.
The signature of the reporter was redacted as well.
Bea phoned Bill and told him to find a fax machine, call and tell her the number, then stay close to it. She faxed him the 51A report immediately.
After reviewing it, Bill called Bea back.
“I didn’t do it, Bea. I didn’t,” he repeated, but his voice was not indignant.
“Where did that stuff come from? Give me just a minute, okay?”
“Take whatever time you need.”
What seemed like a few minutes passed. “I’m back, Bea. I’m okay.”
Bea then went over the 51A with him item by item. “Where did Chloe learn the words for body parts?”
“We taught them to her. You know, with both Denise and I are in medical professions. We never talked baby talk to her.”
“What about the remark that Daddy has a ‘virus in the penis’?”
“If this weren’t so serious, that would be funny. You know, because we talked about medical stuff in front of her, she’d say she had a virus when she didn’t feel well. Sometimes Mommy and Daddy had viruses. Even Roseberry, her stuffed dog, had a virus.”
“What about the punching and kicking?”
“Chloe and me horsing around, playing karate. I used to take her with me to my karate classes at the Y.”
“How often was that?”
“Twice a week, Tuesday and Thursday nights, since she was about three.”
The remaining descriptions were devastating. Nothing could explain them away. Bea had no question to ask but, “Where did she learn that?”
Bill had no reply.
17 - Daddy, do you cry at night?
“Do you miss me, Daddy?,” Bill remembered Chloe asking.
“Very much.” He dared not say more because Denise was listening in on the extension. She always listened in. It was a condition he had agreed to in order to speak to his Chloe on the phone once a week. He had forgotten to tell Bea about that.
“Daddy, do you cry at night?”
He could hear her voice clearly every night when he went to bed.
“Yes, I do. Yes, I do,” he said. He couldn’t fall asleep. He got up quickly and began his warm up routines.
If he did some karate exercises, he’d have control of himself by the time he was finished. He watched himself in his mirror as he warmed up. He spoke silent words to his reflection. Denise, why did you do this? I was so attracted to you. After Chloe was born, you destroyed that. Why?
He led with the other side of his body. Why? His pores opened and closed like waves down his arms and chest. Why? I still loved you... wanted you. He changed sides again.
As he kicked and punched and blocked, he couldn’t stop talking to Denise. And I never cheated on you.
He began his tumbling routine. “Only my good times with Chloe helped me keep my mind off you, Denise.” He tumbled until the waves stopped.
After a shower, he went straight to bed and was able to fall quickly to sleep while thinking Denise didn’t resent his studying karate as much as she disliked his devoting less time to her. Denise wanted attention. No, Denise craved attention. So withdrawn, she had no other source for attention. Maybe he should have given her more. It wouldn’t have come to this.
That night he dreamed about making love to Denise. They were very affectionate. He awoke shocked he still had affection for her. His anger at her seemed less powerful, maybe because he had much better feelings about himself lately. Because of a new girlfriend. She had a rudder. She was bright, went to Smith. He had finally told her everything. Would she run scared?
18 - Grave Digging
The phone rang a few times before Denise answered it in her usual monotone.
“Hello, Denise,” Heather said. “I’m calling to cheer you up.”
“With what? That Roberta told the DA Chloe’s ready to testify at trial or something like that?”
“No, no. Roberta would have called you herself if that was true.”
Heather laughed. “Just to say there’s no whispering going on and at this past visit with her father, Chloe chose to sit at the table where I was sitting. She told her father to sit on the other side of the room. I thought you’d be pleased to hear that.... Then he said he’d write her a letter.”
“See?” Denise spat. “I told you he was manipulative. He always knows how to get his way. Did you see what he wrote?”
“Well, that’s what I’m calling about.”
“Why didn’t you tell me when I picked Chloe up?”
“I didn’t know then what he wrote.”
“How do you know now?”
“When he left, he threw the letters into the wastebasket. I found them later.”
“What did he write?”
“One said, ‘I love you very much. I hope someday we can go to the playground together.’ In another, he wrote, ‘I am buying a new car and someday I’d like to take you for a ride in it.’ In another, ‘I miss you very much. I’m going to buy you a bow and arrow.’ He drew the bow and arrows instead of writing the words.”
“How should that cheer me up?”
“Well, I thought you’d like to know he was going to be buying a new car—some information for your divorce trial.”
“He’s digging his own grave,” Denise said. She didn’t explain what she meant.
Nor did Heather ask.
19 - The Cherry Tree
Bea ushered polygrapher Patrick LaGramme of Insight, Inc., into the main salon of Costaki II. He thanked Bea for providing him with the reports of the accusations against Bill.
“Mr. LaGramme, this test is as much for my peace of mind as it is for anything else. My client wants custody of the child and I must be as sure as possible he didn’t commit the acts he’s been accused of.”
While Bea was talking with LaGramme, Bill was parking his car. When he walked into the salon, his heart was pumping. He was extremely anxious. He’d been telling himself during the drive to Charlestown that it was merely fear of the unknown. Yet he felt confident he could pass the test. It was weird. He felt as if he were having flashbacks to a time when he was electrocuted. Later, he’d tell Bea he didn’t know the meaning of that sensation.
Once aboard the tug, Bill introduced himself to LaGramme.
Bea said, “If you need some help, I’ll be on the enclosed deck.” She left.
Bill concentrated on trying to relax, and LaGramme reassured him he wouldn’t ask any questions which he’d not reviewed with him ahead of time.
“That’s unexpected!”
“We want no surprises, no confusion, no ambiguity,” LaGramme said. “They can cause false impressions.
We want to get all the problems you might have with the test out of the way first.”
“I’m not sure I follow you.”
“Well, say, you had been charged with burglary, and you hadn’t committed the burglary, but you had stolen a dollar out of your mother’s handbag for a special comic book when you were in the third grade. It’s likely you’d come in here worrying that if I were to ask you, Did you ever steal anything? you’d have to say Yes, and I’d then think you had committed the burglary.”
Bill laughed.
“Well, it’s that type of thing I don’t want you to be worrying about. You see, I don’t care what you did in the third grade. I only care whether you committed the burglary. So I want to get your worry about what you did in the third grade out of the way before I ask you the relevant questions. In fact, my goal is to get everything out of your life except the burglary.”
LaGramme had caught Bill’s attention. He was listening attentively.
“Another scenario,” LaGramme said. “Say I asked you, Did you ever lie to someone who trusted you? You answered, Yes, because of all those little white lies you told your mother. You’d describe them. Then I’d ask, Do you remember any other lies you told to someone who trusted you? You’d think there might have been others, but you don’t remember them. You’d say, No, I don’t remember any others. That would be a truthful answer. You don’t remember.”
“Okay, I believe I understand.”
“Good, let’s begin.”
LaGramme asked whether Bill had sexual intercourse or contact with Chloe. Bill denied the question in toto.
“You understand, the purpose of the examination is not to determine whether you told the truth when you denied you sexually molested your daughter, but to determine whether or not the polygraph technique itself can support your position, which is that you were truthful when you denied you sexually molested Chloe.”
“You’re saying the polygraph can’t determine whether I’m telling the truth?”
“Right.”
“And the results can show only whether the polygraph test itself supports my position, whatever that position is?”
“Right.”
“I think I understand.”
“It verifies your truth, what you believe is true and what you believe are lies.”
“It’s misnamed.”
“Yup,” LaGramme said. “And to do that, I’ll ask you many questions and measure your respiration, your heart rate, your galvanic skin response.”
With Bill’s permission, LaGramme attached a convoluted tube around Bill’s chest, wound a blood pressure cuff around his arm, and placed some gel and two small electrodermal tabs on his index and little fingers.
The black, convoluted tubes would measure Bill’s respiration, his breathing cycles. They would expand as he inhaled and contract as he exhaled. Running inside them was a wire attached to a pen that would draw small to giant waves on a piece of paper to record the amount of air taken in and let out of his lungs.
The blood pressure cuff on his arm would measure his cardiovascular activity. As Bill’s heart contracted to push his blood onward and keep his circulation up, the amplitude tracing on the paper would go up. And as the cavities of his heart dilated and filled up with blood, the amplitude tracing on the paper would go down.
Like the check valve on a basement sump pump prevents water lifted up and out from flowing backward into the cellar, a valve attached to the aorta prevents blood from flowing back into the heart chamber after it has been pumped out. The tracing would show the strength of those heartbeats.
Any variations from Bill’s mean blood pressure would be caused by Bill’s personal reaction to fear of detection.
Another instrument would record Bill’s sweat gland activity. The more moisture, the more electricity conducted. Any fear of detection would be exposed by a sudden burst of electrical energy, which would cause the pen to go up and come back down until the energy reached its resting potential. The upward and downward tracings would resemble a mound.
The total picture formed by the lines would be based on his fear of detection.
As a physician’s assistant, Bill understood how the instruments worked, but he didn’t understand how the questions worked.
LaGramme asked Bill a few questions, beginning with a neutral question, “Is your true name William Abernathy?”
“Yes.”
Then he asked a symptomatic pseudo-relevant question: “Do you intend to answer truthfully each question I ask you about that?”
“Yes.”
“Do you still believe I will not ask you any unreviewed questions?”
“Yes,” Bill said nervously but not nervously enough to produce a reaction. Had Bill reacted, LaGramme would’ve known Bill didn’t trust him and that he still had issues that would bother him and create false impressions during the test. LaGramme would’ve had to conduct immediate damage control. Otherwise, Bill’s reaction capabilities would’ve bled away when answering a relevant question.
For a while, Bill’s anxiety was very intense. But not for too long.
With Bill appearing to have no other collateral issues, LaGramme went to another type of pseudo-relevant question that had to be asked at the beginning of a polygraph test: a sacrifice-relevant question, a strongly worded question designed to make Bill worry, a question necessary because the test cannot determine the intent to lie.
“Have you ever had homosexual sex?”
Bill had to think fast. As a very young man, he had experienced another male, but he always thought of it as experimentation, never as a homosexual relationship. So he answered, “No.” He was a little anxious when giving that answer. “Disregarding whether you had sex with Chloe, do you intend to answer each question about that truthfully?”
“Yes.” Here it comes.
Twenty-five seconds later, LaGramme asked, “Did you ever hug your daughter?”
“Yes, all the time.”
And still another twenty-five seconds later, “Have you ever had sex with your daughter?”
“No.”
LaGramme checked the zone of comparison, whether Bill reacted or didn’t react to each question.
Again, after twenty-five seconds, LaGramme asked a second relevant question, “Did you put your penis in contact with the child’s mouth or vagina at any time?”
“No.” Saying No feels pretty good. After that, he relaxed.
The twenty-five seconds was what LaGramme called the “zone of influence,” the time during which Bill’s body would react and the instrument would record how it reacted.
LaGramme asked another pair of control and relevant questions. “Did you ever bounce Chloe on your lap?”
“Sure.”
“Did you engage in vaginal sexual intercourse with Chloe at any time?”
“No.”
“Did you ever give Chloe a piggy-back ride?”
“Yes, she loved piggy-back rides.”
“Did you perform any sex act with Chloe?”
“No.”
“Between the ages of 18 and 30, do you remember ever doing something sexual you were ashamed of?” A control question.
“No.”
“Did you sexually touch Chloe’s genitals?”
“No.”
“Between the ages of 18 and 30, do you remember ever masturbating more than once in a twenty-four hour period?”
“Yes.”
“Did you allow Chloe to touch your genitals?”
“No.”
“Between the ages of 18 and 30, do you remember ever engaging in an unnatural sex act?”
“Yes.”
“Are you holding back information about sexual contact you had with Chloe?”
“No.”
When he left the tug, LaGramme told Bea and Bill he’d evaluate the polygraph charts within the next few days. He’d write up the results and his opinion shortly thereafter.
Bea didn’t ask Bill the questions LaGramme put to him, and Bill didn’t volunteer them. She simply reminded Bill that a lie detector test is not admissible as evidence in court. “So don’t expect miracles from it, even if the test supports your position. But because the police and the DA uses it, I want to be able to wave it in front of them.”
20 - Salvation?
Rachel Gidseg’s 51B report of the DSS investigation arrived. Unsurprisingly, it supported the accusation of child abuse, but buried in the body of the 51B was an indirect identification of a rape counselor—Carol Tracy—as the mandatory reporter. Where the 51A report was, substantively, a report from Hell, the 51B offered salvation:
Child demonstrated with anatomically correct dolls and made supporting statements that her father has sexually and physically abused her.
The admission of using anatomical dolls was the key to unlocking the sexual allegations. A controversy was stirring opinions in the field about whether the dolls should be used to evaluate a child’s complaints of abuse.
According to the 51B, Chloe had been saying depressing things: she felt like a thing; she never did anything right; she felt like tearing herself up into little pieces. Also of concern, her bottom was itchy.
According to Gidseg, Chloe stated her father being out of the house for a few weeks made her feel sad and she wanted him to return home. Asked why her daddy was out of the house, Chloe replied, “Because he’s bad. He punches me (pointing to her shoulder) and he kicks my legs.” He sneaks into her bedroom and pulls the covers down and takes her stuffed dog Roseberry away. “He tries to get in bed with me.” Chloe pointed to her crotch, and said, “He touches me right there! He puts his finger inside me there and it hurts! It hurts because it’s very hard. Sometimes it’s soft after he pees.” She also said, “I cough when he makes me eat his penis. It tasted yucky!” She indicated he touched her only at night when her mother was asleep or downstairs. “He does it every night.”
It started before she was old enough to attend nursery school. She remembers wearing diapers and sleeping in a crib when father started touching her privates. Father told her not to tell as it was a secret. Her mother would get angry at him if she found out. Her father also hit her with a wooden baseball bat on her head and on her bottom and left marks. She indicated her father had hit her on the face with his hand. “He left marks on me all over, but they went away quickly,” she said. “He poked me in the back with his fingernail and it bleed.” Using the anatomical drawing of a young girl and an adult male, the social worker had Chloe place an X on the parts of the body her father had touched. Worker also had her place an X on the parts of her father’s body he used to touch her with.
The 51B also noted that when Denise took Chloe for a genital exam by Dr. Matthews, Chloe became hysterical during the exam so the doctor stopped. He planned to tranquilize Chloe the following Wednesday. “Doctor told mother she thought child’s vagina was red and possibly had a slight tear, but child was so uncooperative that doctor wasn’t sure.”
The Little Chickadees Nursery director stated “Chloe appeared happy and enthusiastic, no sexual acting out or masturbation noticed.” The director “had no concerns.”
But the 51B concluded the physical abuse allegations were “Supported.”
21 - Evidence Under Scrutiny
At first glance, the 51B appeared to resemble the 51A report. The differences were subtle but, Bea thought, significant. She jotted down a few questions: Is there physical evidence? Are the acts physically possible? How could Denise not notice the acts or their consequences? How were the descriptions of the acts elicited from Chloe? With the list in front of her as a reminder, she reread the report.
She dismissed the touching and tickling descriptions as much ado about nothing: Bill had done so much caretaking of Chloe, he probably had touched her everywhere.
Instead she was drawn to Gidseg’s use of anatomic dolls. Had Gidseg asked “Did someone hurt you?” Chloe would have had the opportunity to name anyone, not just daddy, as the perpetrator. By asking Chloe to show her what her Daddy had done to her, Gidseg suggested Bill had done something to the child.
Having given Chloe just two dolls without anything else, it was inevitable Chloe would have the two dolls touch each other in some way. Having given her only one adult male doll made it too easy for the child to identify the doll as the primary male in her life: her father. Bea shook her head and muttered, “This is crazy! If these people weren’t so obviously incompetent, I’d scream conspiracy. If Chloe became hysterical during the genital exam, wouldn’t she have been hysterical if and when Bill touched her or entered her? Wouldn’t Denise have heard Chloe’s cries?”
Bea was unwrapping a set of anatomic dolls when Hugh walked in.
“What have we here?”
Bea set them out on the table. “They’re some company’s version of anatomically correct dolls.”
Hugh picked one up and laughed.
“Okay, describe them.”
He picked up the larger of the two with male clothes. “It’s got a head, body, arms, and legs.”
“Beyond that. More. Describe them.”
“Surely, you must be kidding.”
“No,” she said with some seriousness.
He tried to turn the head. “The head doesn’t turn. It’s made of two circles sewn together and stuffed. The facial features are... other-worldly.” They laughed.
“Continue.”
Lifting a shapeless hand at the end of a cloth cylinder, he remarked, “No fingers.”
She didn’t say anything.
He looked at her. “I suppose there are no toes.” To confirm his conclusion, he took off a shoe from the end of another cylinder. “Righto,” he said. “The foot is not terribly impressive either.”
She waited, looking at him. He saw the expectant look in her face. “Your wish is my command,” he said as he removed the doll’s clothing, revealing merely two rectangles stuffed and sewn together. He looked at the prick. “A smaller cylinder representing his organ surrounded by some dark fuzzy material.” He put the doll down and said, “An ugly mate, isn’t he?”
He had become curious about the female. He held her up and looked at her with her clothes still on. “She’s not Barbie.” He undressed the doll. “Two rectangles sewn together and barely stuffed. Along the bottom seam, some lace in the shape of a paper reinforcement, half of it in the front and half in the back, between the legs, and some other decoration around where the anus would be.” Looking at Bea, Hugh said, “You have no competition, My Dear. She’d never keep my attention.”
“Pretend you’re a child playing with them.”
He picked up both dolls, examined the front and back sides of them, ostensibly to decide what a child would do. He put the prick into the female’s bright red open circular mouth.
“Sexualized Fisher-Price,” she said. “The circular piece fits into the round hole. Think of it, Hugh, how often a child has heard that.”
“Why, my dear, do you have these?”
“To use at some depositions... if I’m lucky enough to get one or more of those social workers to deposition.”
“How do you know these look like the ones they used?”
“I don’t really, but they all look somewhat alike—at least, the ones I’ve seen.”
“Looks like a home-industry product.”
“Grotesque stuff to do in the kitchen while the kids are off to school, isn’t it?”
“Do they use these for diagnosing sexual abuse?”
“I haven’t seen any studies supporting their use for diagnosis. That’ll give us a wedge, but we may have to use a crowbar to get it started.”
“Drink?”
“Sure... lots of ice, please.”
“Would not have done otherwise.”
While he was out getting drinks and crackers, she thought, Could Bill have held Chloe upside down by her feet with one hand while inserting a finger from the other hand into her vagina? When she was an infant? a toddler? At any age? Wouldn’t Chloe have resisted? struggled? She quickly made notes at her desk.
The poor marital relationship and Denise’s rape story seemed to evoke no interest from Gidseg. Nor did Denise’s denial of knowledge that Chloe was being abused.
Gidseg’s question to Chloe about her problems had inspired an astonishing diatribe from a five-year-old child. Devastating statements! What was Gidseg doing while Chloe was talking? Would the child have really said all that in one fell swoop to Gidseg, whom she had never met before that day?
Bea shook her head as she absorbed how Gidseg had broken every rule when she herself identified the perp as Daddy and the victim, Chloe. That should have been left for the child to do.
As Hugh walked into the salon, he said, “Dear, come away from there.”
She joined him on the sofa. “M’god, Hugh, the DSS worker wrote that the child said his penis hurts when it’s very hard, and that it’s soft after he pees.”
“That’s your piece of brain tissue, Dear. There’s always a piece of brain tissue when they’re guilty.”
Bea sipped. He was referring to the piece of brain tissue found in the jacket pocket of the Tufts professor accused of murdering a young girl whose body was never found. Tommy Troy, who was defending the professor, had called his associate in the middle of the night and fretted, “What am I going to do about the piece of brain tissue in his pocket?” Of course, there was nothing he could do.
“There’s got to be a differential diagnosis,” she said. “There’s other stuff that plainly could not have happened.”
“What’s that?”
“Oh, that the child can remember her ‘privates’ being touched while she was still in the crib; or that an infant can understand the concept of a secret;, and a biggy, that Bill hit the child on the head with a wooden baseball bat.”
“Medicals?”
“Not in yet, but it almost doesn’t matter. There’d have to have been a hospitalization at the very least. An infant’s head? We’re talking coma, concussion, or death. That’s the type of stuff admissions, pleas, settlements are made of. One of the caseworkers’ lawyers would have shared that information with me.”
“Come here,” he said as he put his arm around her shoulders. “Just beware of the brain tissue, Dear.”
Look for Part 4 on Monday, August 25th