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Testimonies land conviction, at a price

Some studies suggest that taking the witness stand can be traumatizing for abused children. But for three young sisters, it was something they had to do.

By COLLEEN JENKINS
Published June 19, 2005

NEW PORT RICHEY - The details had the making of a perfect summer day.

The 8-year-old girl drew a tree and flowers with colored pencils, then got hyper off a pack of mini powdered sugar doughnuts. Sitting nearby, one of her older sisters listened to Green Day and Blink-182 CDs - the Wal-Mart versions, with no curse words - through headphones. Her other sister read to Page 130 in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Her mom and dad were there, too, dressed in church clothes. They let her keep dipping into a plastic grocery bag filled with Mentos and sour cream and cheddar chips.

But then a big man with a badge and gun called out her dad's name. He rose from his chair and headed toward a door. The little girl knew what awaited him.

As he walked into the courtroom, her tiny voice followed.

"Good luck, Daddy!"

Last Tuesday, three little girls with flowing blond hair and milky skin became bonded in a way no sisters ever should.

One by one, they climbed onto a witness stand, faced a room of strangers and whispered of their horrible reality: They had been sexually abused. Their molester, 47-year-old Gary Sabino, stared at them from a table not 10 feet away.

Child molestation cases typically don't make headlines, the recent Michael Jackson spectacle being a notable exception. The details are too intimate, the premise too uncomfortable. The trials pit a child's word against an adult's. Physical evidence and other witnesses often don't exist, making the cases tough to prosecute.

Convictions often come with a high price: They almost always require a child to take the stand and testify, an experience some studies suggest can be more traumatic to the child than the abuse itself.

"It is so hard," said Eva Vergos, who prosecuted Sabino. "It's never easy to have such a young, innocent child talk about things that are probably the most violating of offenses."

As the oldest, it seemed appropriate that the 12-year-old girl take the stand first.

She had just finished elementary school with a straight-A year. But the pencil-thin young girl with a slight lisp was still haunted by frightening memories.

She already was shaking when Vergos asked her to tell jurors what happened at Sabino's home in Holiday. Then, she cried.

"Do you need a minute?" Vergos offered.

"One second," the girl responded quietly.

The trusted family friend, the man the girls called "Sparky," had touched her.

When asked, she struggled to describe it. The medical terms, or even their slang, weren't part of her vocabulary. "I don't know how to explain it."

The girls started spending some nights with Sabino in late 2001 and early 2002, months during which they turned ages 6, 8 and 10. Their parents recently had separated, and Sabino became something of an uncle helping out their single father. Oftentimes, their father said, the sleepovers came after he and the girls spent the day barbecuing or boating with Sabino.

Not until a year later, January 2003, did an unrelated allegation of sexual abuse prompt the girls' father to question them about their time with Sabino. Slowly, they revealed their dark secrets.

The time lapse made Sabino's attorney suspicious. But experts in child sex abuse cases say such delays are perfectly normal, given the way society teaches children to mind adults.

"Kids are pleasers," testified Linda Rosario, a former Pasco child protection investigator who interviewed the three girls after the alleged abuse. "Kids want to protect the people around them. They often love the perpetrator."

Typical of child molesters, Sabino spoiled the children with movies and games and a backyard swing set. Indeed, the girls loved him.

As embarrassing as telling their parents about the abuse was, another ordeal lay ahead. The girls had to help convict "Sparky."

Their mother, who lives out of state, agonized over the decision. If the girls didn't cooperate, the molester might walk. If they testified, would the process hurt them more than heal?

"It was the hardest thing in my life," their mother said. "I questioned whether I was doing the right thing or not, even knowing this man was guilty, because I was afraid of what it would do to my girls emotionally."

The middle sister, age 10, testified second. She wore slick black pants and a white shirt. Her hair was pulled back in a scrunchie.

Waiting for her turn, she killed time walking around the courthouse, fixing her hair. She worked a few division and multiplication math problems. She counted the number of blue tiles from the lobby chairs to the front door with her mother and sister. There were 75.

When she was interviewed by Rosario two years ago, the girl had closed down on the subject of Sabino.

"He felt weird to me," she told Rosario then. "He did something to make me feel shaky."

She wouldn't elaborate. But Tuesday, she didn't have a choice. She took a deep breath and told jurors what Sabino did to her. She didn't cry.

Experienced attorneys understand how terrifying testifying can be for children. Prosecutors and victims' advocates do what they can to prepare a child, showing them where they will sit in a courtroom and explaining who will ask questions during the trial.

The efforts help - to a point.

"Our courts are not designed for kids. They never have been," said Nancy Chandler, executive director of the National Children's Alliance, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that works to improve investigators' response to young abuse victims.

"You're really putting kids into a really harsh environment (by asking) in excruciating detail about what happened to them two years ago," she said. "Even adult witnesses have a hard time with that."

Chandler's organization promotes alternatives, such as allowing a child to testify on closed circuit television. The defendant watches the child get cross-examined but doesn't sit in the same room as his accuser.

Though Florida statutes permit such an option, Vergos said the State Attorney's Office must meet a high burden with the courts to pursue it. That leaves Vergos, who has prosecuted child sex abuse cases for three years, to sort through which children can handle testifying. Some can't or won't, she said, so those cases likely result in plea bargains.

"We're not here to damage the emotional stability of that child any more," Vergos said.

Last week, the oldest sister testified against Sabino for two hours, the middle child for about 11/2 hours and the youngest for an hour. Vergos patiently elicited their testimony, encouraging them to call her "Eva" and using their terms of "pee-pee" or "potty" to describe their genitals.

The toughest balancing act fell on Paul Firmani, Sabino's attorney. He needed to assertively represent his client without doing anything to upset the jury or children.

"You cannot aggressively cross-exam a child the way you can an adult," the senior assistant public defender said Friday. "It's probably the most difficult thing you do as a defense attorney."

Even when the children's answers frustrated him, Firmani remained gentle in his approach. But the very experience of getting cross-examined is rough on children, experts said.

The child is thinking "if I'm here, obviously nobody's believed me," Chandler said. "They get so rattled because they keep having to answer the same set of questions, over and over and over again. They have to have a heck of a backbone to go in and do that."

Finally, almost seven hours after arriving at the courthouse Tuesday, it was the littlest child's turn.

She walked into the courtroom, her small hands clenched in front of her purple flowered dress as though she was walking to Communion. She smiled, because that is what she does when she is nervous.

Standing, the 8-year-old barely surpassed the bailiff's waist. Sitting, she had to sit on her knees to see over the witness stand. She tiredly rubbed her eyes a lot and sometimes rested her chin on the stand.

"Do you promise to tell the truth?" Vergos asked.

"Yes," the child answered.

"What happens if you don't tell the truth?" Vergos said.

"A big boo-boo will happen," she said.

Thursday evening, a jury of five women and one man found Sabino guilty on two counts each of capital sexual battery on a child under 12 and lewd and lascivious molestation.

On Aug. 5, Circuit Judge Joe Bulone will sentence Sabino to a mandatory life prison term.

The conviction confirmed for the girls' mother why she and her husband ultimately permitted their daughters to testify.

"I knew (Sabino) needed to be stopped," she said Friday. "I did not want him to hurt any other little girl."

The family didn't return to the courthouse to hear the verdict. The girls stayed home instead, playing with friends in a swimming pool, trying to be kids again.

Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this story. Colleen Jenkins can be reached at 727 869-6236 or cjenkins@sptimes.com

[Last modified June 19, 2005, 00:48:00]