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| The Continued Serial from Barbara C. Johnson |
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| Available on Amazon |
Bea’s Apollo, her modern truthsayer, had concluded that nothing in Bill’s psychological makeup pointed to his being a sex abuser. “His response profile is consistent with that of a normal heterosexual adult male.”
A telling grin grew on Bea’s face when she read, “There were no signs of any conscious attempt to affect the outcome of the examination, either by suppressing or exaggerating his sexual responses.”
There were many tricks that suspected sex offenders allegedly used to throw off the test.
From DeSegonzac’s lengthy report, she learned with particularity of what the penile plethysmograph test consisted: 11 of the 25 slides showed nude adults, and 2 of the 12 audio tapes described adult-adult sexual scenarios.
The slide series included three children below the age of 6, six in the 7-11 year old range, and pubescent adolescents. “Mr. Abernathy showed clear arousal to pictures or scenarios involving adult women, and no arousal, either to visual material or audio tape, to scenes involving children.”
Alan stressed that the penile plethysmograph, no matter how valid it is, must not be assumed to be a lie detector. Forthrightly, the report stated “One cannot exclude the possibility....” DeSegonzac covered his own ass too:
“The range and severity of repetitive, sexually abusive behaviors alleged to have occurred in this instance clearly cannot be taken as being the result of a temporary lapse in control.”Fascinating to Bea was the report’s candor in describing different types of sex offenders: “For example, fixated pedophiles are characterized by the degree to which they focus on children to meet all their emotional and sexual needs. Their lives are notable for the lack of intimate adult relationships, and they are most comfortable in the company of children.
“Regressed offenders, on the other hand, have reached an adult level of adjustments, but under stress they have lost control and acted against children as a way of buttressing their defective self-esteem.
“Still others (the exploitive molester type, for instance), consciously exploit the naïveté, vulnerability, and suggestibility of the child to gratify their own sexual needs.
“All offenders however, of whatever type, share in common a passivity and sense of inadequacy that pervades their emotional, social, and work lives. These patterns hold true as well, for intra-familial sexual abuse.
“Based on the results of these studies I conclude that Mr. Abernathy does not at all fit the psychological pattern of someone who would engage in repetitive sexual abuse of his daughter. He is a man who has a positive self-image, has a number of achievements to which he points with pride. This includes the sense of achievement he feels from his profession as well as his leisure time activities. He is a man who has close friends in whom he can confide and toward whom he feels a genuine sense of warmth and trust.”
The report went on for pages and each page was a fresh delight. Apollo had given Bill a battery of tests:
- MMPI, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory;
- TAT, Thematic Apperception Test;
- Rorschach inkblots;
- Penile plethysmograph.
Bill had passed them all. Almost immediately the report put Bea more at ease with the case than ever: someone else believed Bill innocent of the charges and had at least some objective evidence to back up his position.
It Really Did Happen, Mama
On February 27, Bea received a surprise gift from the assistant DA: a few handwritten pages from what appeared to be Denise Abernathy’s diary.
Denise dated her daily entries. All claimed to reiterate what Chloe had told her. “Her father had tried to make her eat an apple and she didn’t want to. She said she closed her mouth tightly and pulled her head back, but he pushed it against her mouth and made her eat it. Her nightmares were the same from one night to another; they were filled with bats and monsters and the ashes.” When the cat scratched Chloe on her calf, it “felt like when Daddy scratched me.”
To Denise’s credit, she even wrote that “After her father hurt Chloe, he’d always say he was sorry.
She misses her father and wishes he hadn’t left.”
Over several days, Chloe had been putting a lot of things in her mouth, sometimes her fingers, but mostly toys. “Back from our first Victims of Sexual Addiction Meeting, Chloe started pretending she was called on to speak. She said her father’s been hurting her, and he had to get out of the house. She was glad he was out of the house, but she was sad he was out of the house. Then she started talking about her hungry stomach telling her he wanted food, and the cracker she was eating was falling down in her stomach and he peed in her stomach—down her throat and into her stomach—and her hungry stomach was making noises.”
Denise even noted when Chloe was constipated and when not.
The last entry in Denise’s diary caused Bea considerable anxiety. It noted that Chloe said, “You know what? Daddy stuck his penis in my bottom. I told him to cut it out. It hurt. He said okay and pulled up his pants. I went to the bathroom cause it felt kind of wet back there and I was bleeding—just a little bit. It was bleeding just a little bit though right here (she touched her vagina). So I pulled my hair real hard and said ‘Am I dreaming or what?’ I kept pulling my hair but I wasn’t dreaming. So then I thought I was going crazy or something. But I wasn’t dreaming and I wasn’t going crazy. It was Daddy. And Daddy was— The big black monster in my dream was really Daddy. I wasn’t dreaming and I wasn’t going crazy. It really did happen Mama—really it did happen.”
Freak Out time, Bea thought.
She reread that last entry. Was Chloe describing an actual event or was it part of her dream with the monster? Coffee and nicotine, here I come.
In the middle of getting her fix, Bea realized that anything Chloe said after the Sexual Addiction meeting was less important than what she had said earlier to Carol Tracy and Rachel Gidseg. It was those statements which were, although not fresh complaints, potentially dangerous. Bea read Demos’ gift again and concluded that the statements made prior to the meeting were Denise’s thoughts transmitted as if they had come out of the mouth of Chloe.
It was impossible to identify when Denise may have transferred the thoughts to Chloe, but Bea thought it was most likely during the six months Denise was on the waiting list for the rape-victim group plus the last few weeks when she attended the group meetings. Those two periods were critical.
Denise’s obsession with her own rape had heightened during that time. And when she finally got to tell her story to the rape-victim’s group, her own feelings of anger had been reinforced. It had been just a matter of time before Chloe was brought to the rape center where, mimicking her mother’s story, had told Tracy that she, too, had been raped.
Bea doubted that Denise, when on the phone with her friends, purposely tried to influence Chloe. But Bea could picture the child hanging close to her mother while she was on the phone with women from the rape group and becoming engrossed with the subject of abuse.
Consumed for six years with thoughts about payback to Bill for that Saturday afternoon in July ‘83, Denise probably began looking—consciously and subconsciously—for payback after joining the rape group. Her opportunity came when she brought Chloe to Tracy, and Tracy reported Chloe’s disclosure that her father had sexually abused her.
Bea was not so concerned about Chloe’s observation that the male organ was hard before and soft after certain bodily functions. Chloe had lots of opportunities to learn about such things at the YMCA when she was changing into her bathing suit in the boys’ locker room, from a little boy who told her during a swimming lesson, from accidentally seeing her father in the bathroom, or from a little boy urinating at nursery school.
The yucky taste, though—there was no easy explanation for that.
Bea hoped Denise was so obviously disturbed that there was a chance a judge would see it too, but the stakes were too great to just hope a judge would notice.
Bea would have to convince Goldblatt that Denise’s actions and words had influenced Chloe to such a degree that Chloe was Denise’s puppet and that Chloe had no independent memory of the acts she said her father committed.
The question was, how best to convince him?
Who would she use to put that information into evidence?
A memory expert. That’s who she needed.
A Dynamic Duo
On March 1, Bea faxed to Aguilar an updated pretrial conference report, DeSegonzac’s updated report, and a short description of Dr. Toffett’s anticipated testimony:
“Dr. Wilburt Toffett, a Diplomate in Forensic Psychology and Neuropsychology, will be offered as an expert to address the psychological development of a child, memory testing of a child, and the reliability of the child’s testimony in the circumstances of this case.”The next day, Dr. and Mrs. Toffett, who worked with her husband, met with Bea and Bill in preparation for trial.
Adolphe Menjou! M’god, it’s Adolphe Menjou! Bea thought as Wilburt Toffett came aboard. Suave, sophisticated, erect, erect, erect, poised, outgoing, fearless, in control. Perfect! Mustache and all! The light grey suit! M’god, all he needs is to have it double-breasted. Adolphe Menjou was a well-known old-time movie character actor whom, for whatever reason, Bea remembered from her childhood. The screen lit up when he was on it. He was fast but friendly. “Get this. Get that,” he would command forcefully but warmly, almost an oxymoron, and people couldn’t run fast enough to do his bidding. He never played the nasty roles. He was the rogue who would save the day. Bea kept her fingers crossed.
Lillian Toffett is perfect as his understanding wife too, supportive and tolerant. The perfect sidekick. Steady, reassuring, solid motherhood and apple pie.
Both Toffetts would attend each day of trial to listen to the witnesses Aguilar put on the stand. Bill would pay only for one. Toffett could then, if qualified as an expert, comment on the techniques employed by the social workers on Denise, and on whomever else Aguilar called to testify.
But most important was to get Wilburt Toffett on the stand before Aguilar called Chloe. Bea’s motion to exclude her testimony had been denied. Bea had to educate the judge before he heard the child’s testimony. The judge had to disbelieve the child’s testimony before he even heard it.
Aguilar had not given Bea a witness list. Bea wouldn’t complain, because his failure enabled her to produce Dr. Toffett at the last minute. Plus, given the shadow of the criminal case, the more witnesses Bea could hear prior to the criminal trial, the better. Discovery as extensive as this wouldn’t be available in the criminal court.
Aguilar wasn’t objecting to Bea’s experts for the same reason: the DA probably wanted to know as much as possible about Bea’s strategy and Bea’s experts, particularly Toffett. Bea would risk letting him learn the testimony of Drs. DeSegonzac and Toffett in exchange for a finding that Bill had not sexually abused Chloe.
On March 4, it was still dark outside when Bea disembarked Costaki II and loaded the MG with two boxes full of trial notebooks. She went back aboard the tug to make sure the coffee machine was turned off and that she hadn’t left a cigarette burning in an ashtray.
When she finally left Charlestown for Salem County Probate & Family Court, the winter chill was unabated, but the radio forecaster promised a sunny day.
Look for Part 14 of 41 to be posted this week.