by Gay Courter
“How were you notified?”
“By an abuse report that had been phoned into the child abuse hotline.”
“What time was that?”
“After eleven P.M.”
“Did you arrest anyone that evening?”
“No, but we did take the child into protective custody.”
“What time did you arrive at the police station?” Grace asked.
“After midnight.”
“What was Alicia Stevenson’s emotional state?”
“She was trembling and crying.”
“Did you have her write a statement describing the abuse?”
“Yes.”
Grace handed the officer the statement and confirmed that it was the same document. “What time was it written?”
“At two-forty-five A.M.”
In the cross-examination Walt Hilliard asked the deputy, “How would you describe Alicia’s state of mind?”
“Tired, upset.”
“Was she confused?”
“Not that I could tell.”
“Did she want to leave her father’s house?”
“Not at first.”
“How did you convince her?”
“We told her that we had orders to remove her for her own safety.”
“Did she think she needed that protection?”
“Not at that time.”
The next witness was Richard Leroy Stevenson, Jr.
He came in the room escorted by Mitzi, and because he was technically another child-victim witness, the courtroom was cleared again.
“He needs lots of reassurance, or he’s going to lose it,” Mitzi said. “He’s been a basket case in the hall. I told him to watch you, and you would nod that he was doing fine.”
Under Grace Chandler’s gentle questioning, Rich did fairly well. He explained that his father had often been violent toward him, which is why HRS had placed him out of the home when he was very young. He described being slapped in the face so hard it left a “handprint mark.” He then admitted that he had seen his father having sex with his sister.
“Tell us what you saw?” Grace asked.
“I was in the living room sleeping on the couch and my father went out to the porch where my sister was sleeping, carried her into the dining room, and made her lie down on the floor.”
“What did you see your father do to your sister, Alicia?”
“He—you know—had sex with her.”
“Did you hear any words?”
“Just groans from them both.”
“What did you do?”
“I closed my eyes and lay very still, cause I thought I was going to be sick.”
“Did your father ever do anything like that to your brother?”
“I didn’t see it if he did.”
“Did he ever do it to you?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me when that was?”
Walt Hilliard tried to object, but the judge let Rich respond. He told the story of his father masturbating him in the marine shop and said there had been other times before that.
“Has he done it since?”
“No!” Rich said so loudly I flinched.
Grace Chandler turned the witness over to the defense.
“You love your sister, don’t you?” Walt Hilliard began. Rich agreed. “Have you ever taken any drugs?”
“I had crack once, and cocaine twice, some LSD. I was with someone who did needles, but I didn’t want to.”
“Anything else?”
“I did roaches twice, you know, marijuana.”
“How old are you, Rich?”
“Seventeen.”
“Are you married?”
“Yes, I got myself married in the summer.”
“How did you get permission to get married?”
“My father helped me.”
“Didn’t you make a deal with him?”
“No.”
“May I remind you that you are under oath to tell the truth. What did you promise your father?”
“I can’t say. I want to take five.”
“You want to stop for five minutes?”
“No, you know, not five, the Fifth.”
Lillian and I glanced at each other, surprised at what the boy knew to say.
“You don’t want to incriminate yourself by answering my question, is that it?” Walt Hilliard retorted facetiously.
“Yes.”
“What is your wife’s name?” Walt asked, without hiding the smirk on his face.
“Janet Stevenson.”
“Where did you meet her?”
“We were in the same program.”
“Was that program for the treatment of mental and drug problems?”
“Yes.”
“Where were you before that?”
“In the hospital.”
“Was that for emotional problems?”
“Uh, yes.”
“During the few times you have lived at home during the last few years, did you see your father ever abuse your sister?”
“He’d hit her to wake her up. Like slap her face if the cold pistols didn’t work.”
“What are the cold pistols?”
“He kept these water guns in the fridge and he’d squirt everyone with cold water if they didn’t get up with the alarm.”
“Did he squirt you?”
“Yes.”
“Did he squirt Alicia?”
“No.”
“I thought you said you saw him squirt her. Did he squirt her or not?”
“Yes, he did, but she told me about it. I wasn’t around or I was still asleep.”
“What about Cory?”
“Sometimes he’s hard to wake up too.”
“When you described seeing your father lifting your sister out of her bed, what time of night was it?”
“Late, after midnight.”
“Were you asleep?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you said you were a heavy sleeper, so heavy in fact your father had to wake you with a squirt gun.”
“I heard some noise and got up. I don’t know why,” Rich said, his voice rising with anxiety.
I stared at him resolutely, willing him not to lose it, but he didn’t catch my gaze because he was looking off in the distance somewhere far above my head.
“Was it dark in the house?”
“Yes.”
“Then how could you see what was happening?”
“There was a clock on the VCR in the living room and it made a green light. I could see in the shadow of that light.”
“Who was living in your house at that time?”
“Me, my sister and brother, my grandfather, and I guess Vicky, my stepmother, was there too.”
“Where did she sleep?”
“Sometimes in the room with my father, sometimes on the cot on the porch.”
“Where was she that night?”
“I don’t think she was there. Sometimes she’d stay away from the house.”
“But that night was special. You remember what you think your father did to your sister. Wouldn’t you have wondered where his wife was?”
“I guess she wasn’t there.”
“So tell me what you saw your father do.”
“He picked her up and put her down then he made her legs go in the air and he got on top of her and fucked her.”
“Who did he get on top of?”
“My wife.”
“Who?”
“Janet, my wife.”
I gasped. Rich had confused Janet with Alicia again!
“Your father was doing something to your wife?”
“No, my sister.”
“Who is your sister?”
“Alicia.”
“I thought you said it was your wife. Did you mean his wife?”
“No, my sister, his daughter.”
“You got confused, didn’t you?”
“I guess.”
“Couldn’t your previous
drug problems have something to do with you getting confused?”
Before Rich could reply, Grace objected.
Walt Hilliard changed his line of questioning.”Where was the VCR?”
“In the living room.”
“So there was enough light from this little VCR display to allow you to see all the way from the living room into the dining room and for you to realize who it was and know exactly what they were doing?”
“Yes.”
“Now who did you see in those shadows?”
“My father and my wife—I mean my sister.” Rich tossed his head like a dog shaking off water.
Walt Hilliard strolled by the jury making a sad face, as though he joined them in pitying the pathetic, bewildered boy on the stand. “No more questions,” he said and went to his table and sat down.
Grace Chandler walked up casually. “Rich,” she said in a hushed voice, “how do you feel about your father?”
“I hate him.”
“Why?”
“For what he did to me my whole life and now what he did to my sister.”
Grace Chandler called Margaret (Peggy) Elaine Abbott, Red Stevenson’s next-to-the-last wife, to the stand. She wore tortoiseshell glasses and a fluffy haircut that made her look like a librarian in a fifties movie.
When questioned by Grace Chandler, Peggy said she had married Mr. Stevenson in August of 1979 and had remained with him, on and off, for almost six years. Peggy was asked about the relationship, which she admitted had been rocky the last two years, during which time they stopped having marital relations.
“Did you sleep at the Stevenson Groves house every night?”
“No, we used to swap turns sleeping at the marine shop for security reasons. There had been a burglary at the shop.”
“Where would the children sleep?”
“Usually at home, but sometimes Red took one of the boys to the marine shop when it was his turn.”
“Was Mr. Stevenson a good parent?”
“No. He didn’t treat the children fairly and he disciplined them harshly.” She went on to describe how he woke them up with the icy squirt guns, hit them with a strap, and once put soap in Rich’s mouth for lying.
“Did Richard Jr. live with you most of the time?”
“No, he was in special programs so he was home only for vacations.”
“Did your husband spend time with his children equally?”
“No, he preferred Alicia.”
“What about Cory?”
“He was his grandfather’s pet. He’d be over at his house much of the time.”
“Were there many opportunities for Mr. Stevenson to be alone with his daughter?”
“Yes, she’d go to work with him when she wasn’t at school. They got along unusually well. Not like a father and daughter.”
“What do you mean?”
“They were very close, always touching.”
“What did you think of that?”
“I didn’t like it, but when I said anything, Red accused me of being jealous.”
“Were you jealous?”
“In a way. Alicia knew she didn’t have to mind me because he’d step in.”
“Did you ever see anything improper between them?”
“Many nights he would lie down in bed with her. When I asked him about it, he said he did it to relax her and had been doing it since she was a small girl.”
“Did you see what happened when he’d be in bed with her?”
“No, he kept the door closed, but he’d stay a long time.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes.” Peggy swallowed hard. “When he washed her hair—” Peggy started crying. “I didn’t think it was right …”
“Can you describe what you saw?”
“Sometimes he’d run his fingers through her hair and say it had to be washed, and other times she’d be in the shower and shout for him.”
“What would she say?”
“ ‘Shampooman, I’m ready, Shampooman.’ Or he’d call into the bathroom and say, ‘Are you ready for the Shampooman?”
“Who was Shampooman?”
“Her father.”
“Did you ever see what went on in the bathroom?”
“Once I didn’t realize who was in there, so I opened the door, and I saw him reaching into the shower and washing her hair.”
“What was he wearing?”
“Nothing.”
“What did she wear in the shower?”
“She was nude.”
“When was this?”
“About a year before I left him.”
“How old was Alicia when you left?”
“Thirteen. She was grown up, with breasts and pubic hair and I thought she was too old for him to go into the shower with her.”
“Did you ever see anything else?”
“A few months later I came into the house from work early and the bathroom door was open. This time he was washing her hair over the sink, and he was behind her in his underwear and moving back and forth, you know, like sex movements.”
“Was she protesting?”
“No, it was like … she liked it. I got freaked out and didn’t say anything. I just went to sit at the table and I watched them when they came out, and he was drying her hair and being really nice to her and calling her that name I hated.”
“What name was that?”
“My little lollipop.”
“Have you heard that before?” Lillian whispered to me.
“Never! I’ve never heard anything about Shampooman or Lollipop. Nobody ever said anything about the shower either!”
“He’s a dead man,” Lillian scribbled on my pad.
All through the cross-examination I stared at Red Stevenson’s back, trying to imagine him in the bathroom with Alicia, his hairy arms soapy with shampoo and his slippery hands moving from her scalp to her neck and down to her breasts and maybe getting under the shower with her, rubbing up and down on her, and possibly penetrating her.
Walt Hilliard could not shake Peggy’s insistence that she had observed perversions between father and daughter. He asked why she didn’t report him and she sobbed and said she didn’t know where to turn and was afraid nobody would believe her. She had tried to talk to Alicia about it, but her stepdaughter had “clammed up.” Peggy admitted being resentful of the relationship, but also said it “made her sick” and was one reason the marriage had failed.
Although Grace had determined that at least five other girls had been molested in some fashion by Mr. Stevenson, she could not use them to testify. Dawn Leigh Pruitt’s psychological had indicated she might do more harm than good, the three Curry sisters had moved away, and Grace had not tracked them down. The only child who had been subpoenaed was Sunny Rhodes, the stepdaughter who claimed Red had molested her shortly before he started up with Alicia.
The first surprise was Sunny Rhodes’s maturity. Because she was tall, had a womanly figure, as well as a knowing, intelligent look about her, Sunny seemed more like a college student than a sixteen-year-old.
Sunny testified that she had been about eight or nine when she had lived at the Stevenson house. Alicia was six months younger and they had shared a room. Sunny recalled several occasions when Mr. Stevenson pulled down Sunny’s panties and rubbed her bottom, but she never told anyone. Then Grace asked her to describe the incident she recalled the best.
“Red came out of the bathroom wearing an open bathrobe. I turned away and tried to watch television, but he made me sit on his lap, said I had to do what he wanted or he would hurt my grandmother.”
Sunny said Red made her spread her legs, and hold them out while he pressed his penis to her vagina. “I screamed and screamed and said it hurt. He slapped my face and told me to shut up.”
“What happened next?”
“I pretended I was going to the bathroom, but really went to the phone in the bedroom and called my grandmother.” Sunny took a few gulps for air. “She came over and took me to the h
ospital to be checked.”
Shortly after that Sunny stated she went to live with her biological father, who has had custody of her ever since.
Walt Hilliard asked a few clarifying questions, and then Dr. Mort Diller testified that at that time he was the medical examiner at Sawgrass Memorial Hospital. Dr. Diller had examined Sunny Rhodes, and he said that she sustained lacerations consistent with attempted vaginal penetration. He also found semen on her inner thigh.
During his cross-examination Walt Hilliard asked the doctor whether formal charges had been made against anyone during that incident, and the doctor admitted that none had. After further questioning, Dr. Diller could not explain why nobody had prosecuted anyone in that case.
“Do you have any physical evidence that links Mr. Stevenson as the person who allegedly molested Sunny?”
The doctor said that there was none.
For her final witness, Grace Chandler called Dr. Rudolph Leif, who gave a long list of his credentials, including the fact that he had been the primary physician on the child protection team since 1957. He had examined Alicia after she had been removed from her home. Dr. Leif testified that Alicia Stevenson had reported that she had been having sex with her biological father every week or so since the age of nine, the last time being four days before the examination.
Grace Chandler led him through a detailed discussion of Alicia’s physical situation. He described her having reached her menarche at age twelve, and as a Tanner V, “which is a way to describe the highest level sexual maturity based on pubic hair and breast development, with full estrogen effect.” The doctor noted that Alicia had carved several sets of initials on her ankles with a needle. Then he launched into his gynecological exam, which thankfully Alicia was not in the room to hear. “The hymenal opening is central, and six millimeters wide and four millimeters vertically, even with labial traction. It was thick and pink with no visible scars. The inlet easily admitted two fingers with no discomfort for the patient.”
Grace Chandler asked whether these findings suggested that Alicia could have been sexually abused and he said yes, but estrogen in sexually mature women creates vascular changes in the vaginal area, thus making it difficult to ascertain whether or not a girl had been sexually active.
When it was his turn, Walt Hilliard moved very close to the doctor and came to the point. “You described Miss Stevenson’s hymen. Isn’t this the structure that usually disappears after a woman has sexual intercourse?”
“Hymens vary widely,” the doctor replied curtly, then launched into the differences in shape and elasticity.
