I Speak For This Child: True Stories of a Child Advocate

by Gay Courter

  On Sunday Tammy picked up Alicia and drove her to Cory’s foster home, where they stayed about an hour, then she took Alicia back to the Levys’. Birdie Rose, Cory’s foster mother, told me that he was chilly but polite to Tammy. After she left, Cory said he was looking forward to seeing her again when she and I would visit him on Tuesday. On Monday Tammy was up early for the long drive to Cocoa Beach to meet Rich and Janet. The next day I was due to meet her at Cory’s house.

  Because I felt I had lost my objectivity about Tammy, I asked Lillian if she would accompany me on that visit. “I want so much for this to work, I’m afraid that instead of thinking about the children, I am rationalizing Tammy’s behavior.” I then explained how I had defended Tammy when she had not shown up on Saturday.

  “Have you considered that Ruth Levy might have heard Tammy’s intentions wrong? Don’t forget she has a vested interest in retaining Alicia’s affection and perhaps—even subconsciously—undermined that situation.”

  “I’ve thought of that,” I admitted to my supervisor, “but I can’t give Tammy my unqualified support, not when I scrutinize the men she has married and had children with.”

  “I’d be happy to put my two cents in,” Lillian said and wrote down directions to Cory’s foster home.

  Cory was more subdued than usual. Patty was taking care of a neighbor’s Yorkshire terrier and Cory sat on the floor beside the dog, leaning against the flowered divan where I was sitting. Tammy and Lillian took the rocking chairs next to each other and Patty came in and out of the kitchen, where she was preparing a bottle for baby Sheila, and handed it to Birdie. I started the conversation about a truck I had seen with huge wheels, then Tammy described her husband’s pickup truck, which was outfitted in the winter with a snowplow. Suddenly Cory perked up and soon was smiling and joking with Lillian and his mother. When the dog pestered to go out, Cory said it was his turn and went for the leash.

  Taking advantage of the time alone with Tammy, Lillian shifted her body to face her directly. “Is there anything that might stand in the way of your taking custody of your children?”

  “No, I want them both with me, and even Rich if he wasn’t married.”

  “Do either you or your husband have arrests or complications in your background that might be revealed in a thorough investigation?” Lillian inquired.

  “Kirk had a DUI last year.”

  “Just one?” Lillian asked like a mother coaxing a child to show what she was holding in the hand behind her back.

  “Well, two weeks ago he was stopped again, but he joined a voluntary treatment program at the VA hospital.”

  “What about drugs?”

  “Not a problem.”

  “Not even in the past?” Lillian coaxed.

  “I think Kirk used to smoke marijuana, but that was before I met him.”

  “Did you?”

  “No, well, I tried it when I was a kid, but it never appealed to me.”

  “Would the DUI’s preclude the Spates from getting custody?” I asked Lillian.

  “The interstate home study will cover most of this, but I wanted to hear the worst to prevent the kids from getting their hopes up, only to find a skeleton in the closet at the last moment.” Lillian smiled winsomely at Tammy, as if to indicate she hadn’t meant anything personal by the scrutiny. “Anything else we should know first?” Lillian probed without a hint of accusation in her syrupy voice.

  “Well, some years ago Kirk spent time in jail for a rape that took place near his army base. A few others were eventually charged, but he wasn’t.”

  Rape! First there had been Red, then the guy in jail in Florida, and now Kirk. How could Tammy have managed—not only to meet, but to marry—three rapists?

  The patio door opened and the dog bounded in followed by a sweaty Cory. “He’s full of beans today!” Cory rolled around on the carpet with the dog, allowing him to chew on his arm and tug on his clothes.

  When Cory was a little quieter, but still cheerful, I spoke seriously. “You know why Alicia wanted to find your mother, don’t you?”

  “She doesn’t want to go home to Dad.”

  “Right. But you do.”

  Cory nodded. “And I will!”

  “I know you want to, but you have to face the fact that one of three things will happen. If your father is found guilty, he’ll be in prison for several years, probably until after you are eighteen.” I took a long breath. “If he is found not guilty, HRS might determine he is not a fit father and still decide to keep you in foster care, or they might permit you to go back home. However, if they don’t, would you agree to live with your mother and sister instead of staying in foster care?”

  Cory looked up at Birdie and gave her a lopsided grin. “I’d rather stay here, wouldn’t I?”

  Birdie smiled back. “That’s my kiddo! But, Cory, you hardly know your mother and you’ve never met her husband or her other children. How would you like to go for a visit, just to see what it is like?”

  “Well, maybe for a weekend.”

  Lillian laughed and explained it was too far for a weekend.

  “It would be a vacation,” I added.

  “Then, if you wanted to come back to me someday, you could,” Tammy said softly. “Even if you didn’t, you would be able to remember what it was like and we could stay in touch.”

  He glanced from his mother to Birdie, then grinned so wide he revealed his crooked teeth. “Cool! I’ve never had a real vacation.”

  Tammy had made tentative plans to take Cory out for a hamburger if he was willing. When she mentioned it again, he jumped at the idea. After he left, Lillian and I talked with Birdie and asked how he had been reacting to his mother’s visit.

  “He bragged that Tammy was spending more time with him than his sister. I don’t know if that is true, but he wants to believe it is.”

  “Which means he’s already forming a very slender bond with her,” Lillian suggested.

  “He needs a family of his own,” Birdie said. “No matter how hard Patty and I try, we will never be able to give him that.”

  Altogether Tammy spent a week in Florida. This included the first visit to meet Alicia, an initial encounter with Cory, driving Alicia to one therapy session, a half day with Alicia and Cory, the journey to see Rich and Janet, and the meeting with Lillian and me before her dinner with Cory. She was supposed to try to see Alicia again before leaving, but it did not work out because Ruth did not want Alicia to miss school and Tammy didn’t have transportation later that day.

  In the next few weeks Alicia didn’t say much about her mother’s visit, but I noticed Alicia’s attachment to Ruth had intensified. Before Alicia could accept what the Levys had to offer, she may have had to face the reality of her mother fantasy. On the other hand, I understood that Ruth was having some problems with lower back pain and had been advised to have surgery, and if that happened, the Levys might give up being foster parents for a year. Then where would Alicia go? Wasn’t it useful to have a mother who was willing to take her … just in case?

  Mitzi Keller was negative about the children visiting their mother during the summer. “We’re not going to allow it unless we get a completely approved home study.”

  “What about one that authorizes a visit, not custody?”

  “The department only sends kids on one-way plane tickets. They have to commit to staying there.”

  “Would you accept a job or pick a home without a trial visit?”

  “We don’t have funds for transcontinental vacations.”

  Furious, I phoned Lillian. “Don’t worry,” Lillian said soothingly, “you can ask the judge to send them for the summer.”

  “Can he order HRS to purchase the plane tickets?”

  “Possibly, but I wouldn’t count on it. What about that service club that bought the mother’s ticket?”

  “I don’t feel comfortable going back to them quite so soon.”

  “There’s a charity in my town that does that sort of thing and my sister
is on the committee. We can check with them. How much would it cost?”

  “Here’s the crazy part, Lillian. I phoned my travel agent and he said that a one-way ticket is six hundred dollars, but the round-trip discount fare is only three-fifty. Mitzi still claims that HRS won’t buy the cheaper fare because once they send the kids, they do not want them back, and thus won’t give them the ability to return.”

  Many varied fibers of rope were woven through Alicia’s life and they often became hopelessly knotted. Sometimes I thought I spent half my time untangling loose ends until they lay flat again, if only for a short while. First there was the mother strand as Alicia worked with her feelings toward this person she had actively wanted to know, but about whom she had complex and conflicting emotions. Then there were the fibers representing the various boys to whom Alicia was attracted. I may have lost track of their names and faces, but the one constant was that there would always be someone to offer her the solace of sex. There were also her conflicted relationships with her foster sisters, which created complicated flyaway strands that kept the surface rough. But Ruth was the thickest umbilical fiber, the one person she could not function without. Thinner yarns represented Cory and Rich. Alicia wanted to grasp these, but they were often too jumbled to be there for her. School matters, counseling, and other interests—including a job—spiraled off into frayed edges that were not an integral part of the design but had to be dealt with. And winding through everything, often messing up any attempt at organization, was the one yarn with an elastic center thread that squeezed the others: the criminal court proceedings.

  A few weeks after Tammy’s departure, Alicia was scheduled to give a deposition, which is testimony under oath in the presence of the prosecutor and the defense attorney. On the phone Grace Chandler, the prosecuting attorney, confided that Alicia’s friend, Dawn Leigh Pruitt, had given her deposition the previous week. Originally Red Stevenson had been charged with two counts of sexual battery, one for Alicia when she was nine, and one more recent for Dawn. Although both were criminal offenses, conviction on the charge of sexual battery before the age of twelve would result in a much harsher sentence.

  “I’m uncertain about the Pruitt kid,” Grace admitted. “She confuses several incidents, which might discredit her as a witness, and the report I received from her psychologist suggests she has a worrisome score for lying.”

  “What did Alicia’s evaluation look like?”

  “Much better. Her story is solid. Still, I’m thinking it might be in everyone’s interest to come up with a plea bargain. If we nail him for molesting Alicia at age nine, under Florida law he’ll have to serve a minimum mandatory sentence of twenty-five years in jail. A plea bargain for half that time would protect his children and give him a chance to get out eventually.”

  Before the proceedings, I talked to Lillian about how to handle the plea bargain discussions. “Shouldn’t Alicia be asked how she feels about it?”

  “Yes, of course, and you are the best one to explain everything to her and then communicate her wishes to the prosecutor. Also, during the deposition, if you don’t like a question the defense attorney asks Alicia, you can say that you want the judge to certify the question.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The judge will decide whether the question should be allowed or not.”

  “So the proceedings stop and wait until someone can find the judge?”

  “Sometimes, but usually they ask the judge later and get back to it. At least you’ve objected and it gives the kid a break. Also, if you think she is being badgered or if she gets emotional and needs a rest, you can request a recess.”

  “How will Grace feel about my interference?”

  “She’s not your concern. You are the guardian and you are there to represent what is best for Alicia, not what is best for the state’s case.”

  Assembled around a rectangular table at nine-thirty on the appointed morning were Red Stevenson’s defense attorney, Walt Hilliard, the person who had scheduled this proceeding; Grace Chandler; the court reporter; Alicia, and me. The formal deposition began with Mr. Hilliard asking questions. This was the third occasion I had heard Alicia tell the story. The first time had been with an assistant prosecutor who had been assigned the case initially. When he resigned and Grace took over, his notes had been too incomplete for her to use, so Alicia had been forced to suffer through the questions again. Since I was the only person who had heard the testimony twice, I was the only one who knew that there had been discrepancies between the versions. Now I feared Mr. Hilliard, who did not have a reputation as a nice guy, would be brutal if he also uncovered the holes in her story.

  I had reviewed my entire file the night before. The moment Walt Hilliard opened his briefcase, I recognized the documents he took out and laid on the table. I was pleased that I had photocopies from the sheriff’s department files and pulled out my matching papers.

  When the police first asked Alicia the date sexual activity began with her father, she said that she had been five years old, which is also what she wrote in the police report the night she was removed from her home. In subsequent testimony, however, she had claimed she had been nine. In preparation for this deposition, Grace and I had worked with Alicia to see if we could pin down the dates. Several years earlier an incest case in Arizona had been lost because, while the victim had stated her father had intercourse with her several times a week for many years, she could not specify the dates and locations of each alleged occurrence. Thus the charges were considered defective, and the Arizona Supreme Court ordered the dismissal of the indictment even though the father had acknowledged that he had intercourse with his daughter at least a dozen times, had impregnated her, and forced her to have an abortion. No matter that few people can accurately state the dates they have had sex, this burden of proof was expected of a molested child. Grace believed that such precision was not required in this case, but the more unequivocal Alicia could be, the better.

  After Mr. Hilliard recorded Alicia’s name, age, and the details about where she lived and attended school, he asked, “When did you first have sex?”

  “When I was nine.”

  “Where did this take place?”

  “At my father’s marine shop.”

  “Where was this?”

  “The first property he had, the one before the underpass after you cross the railroad bridge on North Main.”

  “When was it?”

  “The summer before Dad moved to the marina. I was going into fifth grade, my last year at Sawgrass Primary, but I wasn’t ten till after school started.”

  “So this was sometime in the summer. When in the summer?”

  “A few days after the Fourth of July, probably sometime that next week because my grandfather always had a barbecue on the Fourth and there was some leftover rolls and salads that were in the fridge at the shop that day.”

  So far so good. Next Alicia handled the detailed questions about having sex with her father with equal aplomb. She described how he followed her into the bathroom, showed her different positions for intercourse in a pornographic magazine, then made her pull down her panties, and bend over the toilet. Then she claimed he penetrated her. Alicia’s voice was muted, but she had remained calm.

  Then Walt Hilliard abruptly changed the subject. “Who is your best friend?”

  “Dawn Leigh Pruitt.”

  “Where does she live?”

  “She moved to Clearwater.”

  “Do you see her very often?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “My dad wouldn’t let us get together anymore.”

  “How did you feel about that?”

  “Mad. He did it to punish me and her.”

  “For what?”

  “We ran away once.”

  “You hitched a ride with some boys, didn’t you? Where did you go?”

  “To the beach.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Fourteen.”r />
  “How old were the boys?”

  “Twenty, I think.”

  “Do you think it was safe for girls that age to go off with strange men?”

  “We knew them.”

  “Did you have sex with them?”

  I started to speak, but Grace beat me to it. “Objection.”

  Walt Hilliard didn’t skip a beat. “Did you and Dawn stay in contact after she moved?”

  “We tried, but my father didn’t like me making long-distance calls.”

  “Isn’t it true that you ran up a phone bill of over fifty dollars in one month?”

  “I dunno,” she said in a childish voice.

  “Did he punish you for that?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s when you ran away to be with her and the boys?”

  “I guess …”

  “You guess? Is that what happened or not?”

  “It’s what happened.”

  “Isn’t it time for a break?” I asked.

  Grace called a recess. Alicia and I hurried to the rest room and she went into the stall, while I waited. After five minutes, she came out and splashed water on her face.

  “That guy’s a pig.”

  “Yes, well, that’s his job.” I made a snuffling porcine noise in my throat and Alicia burst out laughing.

  We went out and bought Cokes from the machine while we waited for Mr. Hilliard to reappear.

  After we were seated, Mr. Hilliard pulled out a yellow legal pad and pointed to a name. “Who is Hank Edwards?”

  “A friend of mine.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “At the Marina Motel.”

  “Is that near your father’s shop?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he the same race as you?”

  “No, he’s black. So what?”

  “Does he work at the motel?”

  “Yeah, he’s the night manager.”

  “Did you ever go to his room?”

  “I guess I went in there once in a while.”

  “At two in the morning?”

  “No, like in the middle of the day.”

  “A witness told me that she has seen you coming out of his room at all hours of the night.”