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He asked, “How’s it going?”
“Some good, some not so good. I give her an F for credibility and an A for bias in Denise’s favor.”
“Ugh.”
“Right on.”
“There must be more, Bea.”
“Yes, there is. She’s very much like Leavitt in that she doesn’t remember anything about her education beyond getting her degree in sociology. She’s like a broken record: ‘I don’t remember, it was twenty years ago.’”
“And?”
“No time now. They’re probably waiting for me. I’ll fill you in later. I saw you’d called, so you must’ve had something else on your mind.”
“I did. I saw my mother this weekend, and she asked again about Chloe. She’d love to see her. Do you think if we start now, my parents will get to see her during the holidays? Maybe even get to take her to McDonald’s before then?
“Will give it a shot.”
“I know my dad gets a chance to see her on Saturdays, but he wants to be able to take her out, just take her somewhere outside. To the movies. You know, in the house, he doesn’t even get a chance to speak to her or to just play with her, with Denise there and all. It’s stifling... oppressive. Denise is so grim. She doesn’t even say hello to him.”
“I understand.”
“Bea?”
“Yes, Bill?”
“This is just legal kidnapping. They’re keeping Chloe from seeing her grandparents and her aunt even on her birthday. All they wanted to do was bring her a few gifts and a cake.”
“I understand, Bill, I really do. Like I said, Denise is worried they’ll question her about abuse or talk her into not testifying. How could they have a trial without her?”
To McDonald’s We Should Go
Primed by Bill’s phone call during the break, Bea raised the issue of Bill’s wanting to take Chloe to the Ice Capades, of having grandfather as a chaperone so Bill could take Chloe swimming, to the zoo, or out shopping, and with grandma, to McDonald’s. These were activities that Bill called normal, activities that would get them out of the atmosphere of the house darkened by Denise’s presence.
Heather said Denise didn’t want Chloe to go, and Heather herself didn’t think these trips were in Chloe’s best interest because neither Denise nor herself would be supervising the visit.
They went back and forth about who was to chaperone the visits between Bill and Chloe. Nothing was resolved. Heather only buttressed and conveyed Denise’s demands to Bill. Heather never suggested an alternative idea to Denise.
“Is it MSPCC’s position that they don’t want the father near the child at all, to have anything remotely resembling a normal relationship with this child?”
“No, it’s not. Our position is that the visits with the father need to be supervised.”
“But you’re saying No to everything. You’re not allowing any normalcy whatsoever in the relationship. Are you willing to concede that?”
“I don’t think I’m the one saying No.”
Denise is. If Heather’s role was strictly as she said—to observe the play of Chloe and Bill and ensure the safety of Chloe—Heather could find support for her own behavior. But it wasn’t; her role, which included writing reports about the visits, was also that of spy, a conspirator: while her progress notes showed the visits as being pleasant ones, her communications to other caseworkers reported Bill’s behavior as negative. If she was afraid to disagree with a worker who harbored negative feelings about him, then she should have remained silent. But she didn’t. She joined them, without basis. That’s what galled Bea.
Allowing Denise to be the arbiter of visitation disputes was dangerous. No one really knew Denise except Bill, and none of the caseworkers was listening to him. Adding to Bea’s frustration, of course, the court would do nothing to change how the supervised visits were taking place.
“Are you familiar with the subject of guilt and how it relates to sexually abused children?”
“Yes, but I’m not an expert.”
“I know you’re not an expert on that, but did you ever try to relate guilt to this action of Chloe keeping her distance from her mom for about a half-hour each time after Daddy leaves from the house or from MSPCC?”
“I try to relate it to what I learned at seminars, but I can’t. I wrote it down because I thought that was important.”
“Who thought up the idea that Bill would call Chloe on Tuesdays and have Denise monitor the phone calls by listening in on an extension?”
“I don’t remember. That was in the very beginning of the case. I don’t recall. The idea of monitoring was to protect Chloe against intimidation, threats.”
“Were there ever any allegations that he intimidated the child over the phone?”
“There have never been any actual intimidations, but there was the possibility he might try to intimidate her.”
“Oh, come on.”
“Well, Chloe needed to be protected.”
“It’s now October 1990, you’ve been sitting in on the play sessions of Bill Abernathy and Chloe for almost a year and a half, so you’ve seen him every week.
Now be honest with me. I don’t want you to say something because you think I want to hear it. Be honest as a human being, not as a social worker at MSPCC, but also as a human being known as Heather Bruce.”
McFadden interjected, “Can we agree for the record that she’s a nice lady?”
“Sure.” Bea responded with a semi-condescending tone to the chauvinistic inanity.
“Has Mr. Abernathy ever given you any reason whatsoever to make you think he was using verbal or subtle intimidation? Not what Mom or Rachel Gidseg said, not what Kristin Uhler echoed.” Bea stopped long enough for a breath. “You saw him from week to week. It’s important I get a real answer from you, and an answer you can back up with some facts, not just ‘I don’t remember’ or ‘I don’t recall’ or ‘I don’t want to do it’ or ‘it’s not in my job description.’”
Heather named the time Bill whispered to Chloe, “‘Do you know why Mommy won’t let me come home?’ or something like that, and asked Chloe why Mother wouldn’t let him see her.” Heather believed those questions constituted verbal intimidation to Chloe.
“She could feel threatened by that statement.”
“Now, Chloe never told you that?”
“I heard that when Mrs. Abernathy called and told me.”
“So all of this is from Mrs. Abernathy? You never heard him say that to Chloe?”
“No, I was on the phone.”
“Did you or did you not ask Mr. Abernathy about it?”
“I addressed it with Mr. Abernathy.”
“Usually when you have discussions about things with Mr. Abernathy, you write them down, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And that one you didn’t?”
“That’s correct.”
“Would it be important to write down what his reaction was?”
“I don’t know why—”
“But his reaction isn’t important because you never believe him, right? You believe only what Mrs. Abernathy says, right? See, it’s that bias again.”
“Objection.”
“I know.” Keep your feelings out of it, Bea, she told herself. Yet she hoped she’d given Heather enough of a guilt trip about her bias against Bill that she’d balk at testifying at either trial to avoid being embarrassed in open court. Bea wanted her neutralized.
Next Bea focused on the no-touch rule.
“The no-touch rule was that Father and Chloe should not touch each other,” Heather said.
“Do you recall the incident where Chloe herself went ahead and touched her father several times, and after Bill Abernathy left, Denise was angry and told Chloe she felt that Chloe had set her up, and then sent Chloe to her room for twenty minutes?”
“Yes.”
“Do you agree with Denise Abernathy that Chloe was setting up her mother here?”
“I think Chloe was testing limits set up by Mother. I don’t think Chloe was trying to set her mother up. She may simply have forgotten during that visit.”
Bea’s head was awhirl. Needing time to think, she pretended to read the progress notes. Assuming Denise was not bonkers and was not acting in bad faith this last year, Mother would have set up the no-touching rule ostensibly to assure, as she said, that Chloe not be retraumatized. But if Chloe were in fear of Bill, would she forget the rule so easily? Or was she just having fun? “Do you think it was reasonable or unreasonable of Denise to be angry with her and put her in a room for twenty minutes?”
“I think it was reasonable.” Wow, the first commitment of the day... but look where it came.
“On this happy note, let’s break for lunch,” Bea announced with some relief.
Thorns of Life
Aguilar had to leave for the day. So just McFadden and Heather headed over for lunch to the small fast-food restaurant alongside the historical frigate, the U.S.S. Constitution, a ten-minute walk from Costaki II.
Bea took her own lunch to the aft deck. She had ordered-in the best antipasto in town. While she was munching, she remembered how demeaning supervised visitation was.
When Bea’s husband, in the midst of their divorce twenty-five years ago, became fearful that Bea would take off to England, he had hired a private investigator to accompany Bea and the children wherever they went.
Using the skill of the oldest profession in history—which should be legalized—Bea not only neutralized the male-hormonic PI but got him to reveal it was the maid who’d tipped her husband to Bea’s affair.
“I made sure the bun stayed in the oven,” he boasted, believing the bun’s yeast was supplied by Bea’s husband in exchange for information about Bea, and that the last thing Mr. Archibald wanted was a child with this wild, but vexingly curvaceous little alley cat, of whom his mother disapproved.
Bea sat on a recliner and closed her eyes. It felt good to be alone to unwind. She was able to do so only for a short while before her mind returned to the job of the day.
She wanted so badly to call Heather “stupid,” but she didn’t want to sound pompous or elitist. That was Bea’s mother’s war cry for years and years: “You think you know it all.” It was like a fingernail on a blackboard. It and the thorns of life taught Bea humility. So much so, she learned not to trust her instincts, even when perhaps she should have.
Eventually Bea found it safer to distrust, to require proof before she believed anything. She abandoned respect for authority, and rebellion was only a short hop from there. No one would get her respect simply because he wore a black suit, whether standing on a pulpit or sitting behind a bench or a desk. He would have to earn it.
Her entry into the Law when she was a grandmother arose only because she was in Survival Mode. She’d learn how to protect herself.
Right now, Bill Abernathy was in Survival Mode. He was defending on two fronts: in the divorce and criminal courts. It was going to cost a lot: tens of thousands of dollars for legal fees, deposition and trial transcripts, expert fees. He would need money for experts on the suggestibility of the child’s memory and on psychological profiles of pedophiles. He might even have to hire experts on expertise—expert witnesses who sit and listen to the other witnesses on the stand so that they can testify regarding the testimony of the preceding witnesses. At a rate of a few hundred dollars an hour for each expert, the cost for experts becomes steep quite rapidly. Prohibitive for most.
Bill was already working two jobs and planned to work a third part-time. And he’d never get the money back, no matter what the verdict. A successful civil suit would be next to impossible. The walls of immunity were high.
Accountability and liability were empty shells here. The Massachusetts constitution says there should be a remedy for all wrongs, but that declaration had been neutered in these sex-abuse cases. Immunized against liability for their incompetence, social workers were safe.
Pol-ic-y Want a Cracker!
After lunch, Bea changed her focus and told McFadden and Heather to turn to an entry in Heather’s notes about a game Bill and Chloe played.
“What are your conclusions about the mosquitoes or stuffed animals game?”
Heather relayed, “He was passive, and she was aggressive, and that interaction went very well, and later on in the visit, she allowed him to touch her arm, and he kissed her on top of her head, and the visit went in a reasonable way.”
“But Chloe—when she was touching her father, and her father was touching her—Chloe appeared to like it?”
“Chloe didn’t object to it.”
“Now look at the cat stew story. I have a particular fondness for this story,” Bea said. “Mr. Aguilar tried to turn this against Mr. Abernathy in front of a judge one day. Your story appears to agree with his, except for your conclusions.” Bea was looking at the entry.
At the end of the story, Heather had written, “Both of them crawled on the floor with very little inhibition.
Father allowed Chloe to play with the beeper on his belt as he lay on the floor curled up in a fetal position.”
“They enjoyed this, and Chloe was not threatened by him saying he was going to make her into cat stew, was she?”
“They both enjoyed the game.”
“Would you have suspected Chloe would have had nightmares about this game, which, according to Denise, she had?”
“I don’t know what she would have had nightmares about.”
“Well, if you thought she might have nightmares, you wouldn’t have allowed the play to continue, isn’t that true?”
“It was clear they were both enjoying playing the game, and there was no reason for me to stop them.”
“So the answer to my question is Yes?”
“I didn’t see any reason to stop it at all. If there was something wrong with it, I would have stopped it.”
“Well, after you see Bill and Chloe Abernathy play at what you regard as appropriate play, and Denise Abernathy comes in shortly thereafter and says they shouldn’t have done that, do you ever confront her and say, ‘Denise, why are you saying that? They got along well. They played well together. Why are you so excitable about that? Will you speak to your therapist about it? Will you seek some help? Your perception isn’t quite an accurate portrayal of what happened. I was there.’ Did you ever say anything like that?”
“I was there, and I know what happened,” Heather said, “but in this particular instance, Denise called me up and said Chloe told her she didn’t like it. Later on I talked to Chloe about it.”
“And what did Chloe say?”
“She said, ‘It hurts when he’... something like ‘It hurts when he touches me.’”
“But you were there, and you knew it didn’t hurt her at the time.”
“Chloe didn’t say it didn’t bother her at the time.”
“So you were wrong in your perception?”
“I only observed what I saw going on.”
“But you said they were playing appropriately, and everyone seemed to be having a good time. Isn’t that what you wrote?”
“They played in a way that didn’t seem to be harmful to either one of the people; however, in that particular instance, when Mrs. Abernathy called and told me Chloe said she didn’t like it when her father touched her, then I later spoke with Chloe about it.”
But you didn’t set Mother straight! Bea asked Heather about an event in which Chloe lied. “What does the report say?”
“It’s typed. It says, ‘Home visit with Mother. Chloe has had nightmares of monsters and flashbacks. She refused to speak to boyfriend when he called on Tuesday.’ That’s supposed to say she refused to speak to her father. That was what I had written in my handwritten dictation. I didn’t write boyfriend.”
“Can you send me copies of what you gave the typist to type from?”
“I doubt if they have it.”
Bea held in a chuckle. “What’s the next sentence?”
“‘She told Mother to say she had gone to Hawaii with her sister.’”
“Now, does she have a sister?”
“No.”
“Would that have been a truthful thing for Chloe to tell Mother to tell whoever called, whether it be Father, boyfriend, or whoever?”
“She appears to be avoiding talking to someone on the telephone.” Light finally dawned on her that the child lied and that her own lie wouldn’t hold water.
“Did she use the truth or a lie to avoid doing it?”
“That wasn’t the truth.”
“Do you think maybe she heard her mother say she had gone to Hawaii with a sister?”
“No.”
“Now, have you known Chloe to be truthful?”
“Yes.”
“Why would she have told a lie in this instance?”
“I can only surmise she didn’t want to speak to the person on the phone.”
“Couldn’t she have said I don’t want to speak to the person on the phone?”
“She could have, but she didn’t want to. She said something else.”
“She told a lie, didn’t she?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Is this according to Mom?”
“That’s correct.”
“It’s not according to Chloe?”
“That’s right.”
Then why on Earth did this woman say just a few minutes ago that Chloe did not tell the truth? Chloe’s either mimicking Mommy or saying what she thinks Mommy wants her to say. Good either way.
“Two issues haven’t been brought up here. The accusation that has been perpetuated that Mr. Abernathy has made either digital or penile penetration into the child Chloe, and the medical records. Have you read the medical records?”
“Yes.”
“And are you aware that no evidence of penetration was determined medically?”
“Yes. that’s in the record.”
“So, have you written any retraction of the charge?”
“No.”
“So MSPCC notified the DA’s office when they believed or concluded there was penetration, but failed to notify the DA’s office when you know there was no evidence of penetration, isn’t that true?”
“Yes. I had no obligation to withdraw or retract an accusation I was unable to substantiate.” But she would not admit she wanted to perpetuate a falsity. No, perpetuating a falsity was not part of MSPCC’s policy.
“Is there any instance you know of where MSPCC has withdrawn an untrue statement from the DA?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
Heather’s admission that she hadn’t notified the DA’s office made it tempting to put Heather on Bill’s witness list, but the danger of having her as a witness with her attitude far outweighed any possible benefit.
“I object to that line of questioning for the record,” McFadden said. Bea’s pleasure at the answers she got must have shown on her face.
Bea switched the subject to the results of the chlamydia and other lab tests. Bea showed them to Heather.
Bea pointed to sections and asked, “Do you know what that means?”
“No, I don’t know what that means. I don’t know how to interpret this test. It appears to mean she tested negative to chlamydia, but I’m not sure that’s what it means.”
“Is there anything else you understand or don’t understand on that?”
“I don’t know what, specifically, all those words mean.... I cannot interpret it, because I’m not a nurse or doctor, but referring back to the assessment.”
“So when you repeated in your notes that Chloe was cultured positive for chlamydia, you hadn’t the vaguest idea what the hell you were talking about?”
“I read that from the assessment.”
“Right, and you parroted it, isn’t that true? Wasn’t that irresponsible of you to put that in there, without knowing what you were putting down? Wasn’t that irresponsible? I’d like an answer.”
“No.”
“It wasn’t irresponsible for you to put down as true what you didn’t understand? Isn’t that a serious accusation?”
“I received that from the assessment.”
“It’s worse parroting what you don’t really understand, isn’t that true?”
“Yes.”
Hoorah! Nothing better than a little guilt trip. “Did you ever ask Denise whether she was sexually abused as a child?”
“I didn’t ask her myself, no.”
“Did you ever ask anyone else?”
“It was in the report, the assessment again, that she had not been abused as a child.”
“But you never made inquiry of her?”
“No.”
“So you don’t know really who else was parroting whoever’s wrong information?”
“I didn’t get the information wrong myself, no.”
“You didn’t think it was appropriate to ask her?”
“I didn’t ask her.”
Unmuddying Waters?
McFadden took the rare step of cross-examining Heather at the depo. Clearly trying to rehabilitate his social worker, he asked lots of questions in an attempt to unmuddy the waters muddied by Heather on direct examination.
No, she wasn’t implying anything negative by writing that Bill Abernathy assumed a fetal position at one point in playing with Chloe. No, she never caught Denise in a lie about things she could verify. No, she couldn’t confirm any conversation with Chloe because of Denise’s influence on the child. No, she was not deliberately hiding the negative medical information from the DA; she sensed the DA’s office already had it.
Although Heather believes Bill and his daughter love each other, it is possible, Heather insisted, for someone to abuse a child and still love them. So that left Bea with one question: How were Heather and McFadden defining love?
Know Nothing and Speak Evil
“Attorney McFadden asked you, ‘Did you ever catch Denise Abernathy in a lie,’ and you said, ‘No.’ I ask you, Did you ever catch Bill Abernathy in a lie?”
“No.”
“He asked you ‘Did Denise give you much direct knowledge regarding the sexual abuse herself’, and you said, ‘Not much.’ Did you ask her?”
“No.”
“Did Denise Abernathy ever say to you she was raped by her husband?”
“She, I believe, referred to rape, but she didn’t want to discuss it with me. She said she’d talked about it with Kristin Uhler.”
“So did you question her, and she refused to discuss it?”
“No, she indicated she was uncomfortable about it, so I didn’t pressure her.”
“Did you ever speak to Rachel Gidseg about the disclosures?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me what you and Rachel Gidseg talked about?”
“I remember something about Rachel being the one who did the investigation, and that she had used the anatomical dolls, but I don’t remember any details of the conversation.”
Heather admitted she spoke to Gidseg on the phone rarely, but had never met her face to face, and had no knowledge of Gidseg’s experience, education, interviewing technique, or theoretical bent.
“So you don’t know how valid, in fact, what she has written is?”
“I have no reason to believe that it’s invalid.” Her forearms, covered by a long-sleeved gray sweater, remained crossed between her elbows, which were resting on the table, and her fingertips didn’t shift or squeeze the upper arms they held. Bea tried to see something in her face—confusion, trepidation, vulnerability, discomfort, embarrassment, guilt—something that would enable Bea to understand where this woman was coming from. But she saw nothing, not even a smile on her lips or a twinkle in her eyes. All Bea could discern was that Heather wasn’t happy.
“But you don’t know whether she used leading questions to interrogate the child, do you?”
“I read the report, but I don’t know specifics of the investigation.”
Heather said the same thing regarding Carol Tracy.
“You told Mr. McFadden you had no reason to believe Chloe’s disclosures were inaccurate. Now I ask you, now that we’ve gone over the lack of your knowledge about the education, training, experience, and interviewing techniques of Rachel Gidseg and Carol Tracy, do you have any reason now to believe the disclosures were inaccurate?”
“No.”
“In other words, anyone with a little experience could have gotten those disclosures?”
“No,” she said with a straight face.
“Anyone with little education could have gotten those disclosures?”
“No.”
Ditto. “Well, if more than just a little experience and education is necessary to have you believe they’re credible and their descriptions of the disclosures were accurate, where is their credibility or accuracy coming from? That one was employed by DSS and the other by the Rape Crisis Center, does that lend them the extra credibility they needed?”
“I have no reason to believe what they reported was inaccurate.”
“That’s all. Thank you for coming. At least you’ve missed the rush hour.”
Bea hoped Heather Bruce was sufficiently embarrassed or intimidated that she wouldn’t appear as a witness against Bill Abernathy at either the divorce or the criminal trial. Heather hadn’t actually said explicitly damaging things about Bill, but her attitude would be damaging. She was judgmental and probably too malleable for Bea’s purposes.
Bea would never be able to prove a conspiracy of the social workers. A court would laugh. The politicians wanted the female vote.
Look for Part 12 of 41 to follow this segment of the serial.
