Freed mom seeks new start with daughters who accused her

Bill Gang

Monday, Nov. 23, 1998 | 12:22 p.m.

Connie Behymer spent 19 of the past 26 months in jail on the word of her two daughters that she pandered them to strangers on the Las Vegas Strip when they were just 4 and 6 years old.

Yet when she was released from jail a free woman last week -- the pandering charges dropped and doubts raised about the integrity of the investigation -- Behymer's first thoughts were of the welfare of the girls, now 11 and 13.

"It feels terrible ... I do miss them so much," Behymer said Friday in an exclusive interview. Tears welled in her eyes as she said, "I miss watching them grow, helping them in school ... playing video games with them."

Behymer left Las Vegas on Saturday for a 26-hour bus trip to her mother's home in Oklahoma City, planning to try to regain custody of the girls -- or at least obtain visitation rights.

The girls are in the custody of a second cousin in Oklahoma -- relatives who Behymer and her attorney believe played a manipulative role in the multistate melodrama.

But, said Cheryl Stefenel, who has custody of the girls, no manipulation occurred. Only a "gross injustice" to the girls. "All they wanted to do was tell their side. The district attorney did not do their job."

The custody struggle is one Behymer and her lawyer, Deputy Public Defender Joe Abood, think she likely will lose.

"The kids have been away from their mother so long, any judge would be hard pressed to give them back," Abood said. "In fact, she's not going to get them back.

"That's the tragedy of this case," he said.

Behymer would like to tell the girls, "I love you and want you back if you want me."

The girls, said Stefenel, "don't want to see their mother."

She has filed for a termination of parental rights in Oklahoma City. A hearing on the petition will be held Feb. 8.

The girls' stories could have kept their mother in prison for 20 years or more, but the criminal case sputtered when the district attorney's investigation could not support the allegations.

The felony charges were dropped last week when the 37-year-old mother pleaded guilty only to a gross misdemeanor count of failing to provide adequate care and shelter for the girls. That charge stemmed from her homeless status and carried no insinuation of sexual impropriety.

The felony charges of sexual assault of a minor, pandering and child abuse with substantial physical or mental harm were dismissed.

Abood said after prosecutors saw the tapes, they offered to plea-bargain the case and recommend a sentence that was equal to the number of days she already had been in custody.

The guilty pleas were under a legal provision that does not require her to admit responsibility.

Abood said Behymer took the plea bargain because it guaranteed she would be released immediately from jail.

Abood alleged the stories of pandering and sex with strangers had been fed to the girls by family members and counselors years after they were supposed to have occurred.

Behymer was alleged to have stood outside Circus Circus hotel-casino and offered the girls for sex day and night to passing men.

"Fifty dollars, no refunds, no money back" was what an FBI complaint quoted Behymer as having told the men. Transactions were alleged to have occurred 20 or 30 times, and the girls were sent off to have sex in homes or hotel rooms.

"It didn't happen," Abood barked, holding videotapes of FBI interviews that he said supported Behymer's claim of innocence but were hidden by federal officers until recent weeks.

"The FBI put this case together in a fashion that ruined this woman's life," he said. "This is a case where she didn't do a damn thing."

Even Deputy District Attorney Thomas Moreo concluded, after doing everything his office could to confirm the allegations, that "we couldn't prove it happened."

"Most of what they said were the counselors' words, not the kids' words," said Moreo, who heads the D.A.'s Crimes Against Women and Children Unit. "To prosecute, we need more than the words of counselors."

He said he was troubled, because "the story was that she threw the kids into cars with men, yet mysteriously the kids always found their way back to where mom was.

"And there were no reports of men being solicited and rejecting the offers," Moreo continued. "Even as jaded as people can be in Las Vegas, there is going to be someone who would tell a security guard or police" that a woman was pandering her children.

"This is a case of (the girls) saying it happened and nothing substantiates it," Moreo said.

Moreo's office presented the evidence it had at a well- publicized preliminary hearing in March "in hopes of flushing out information" to corroborate the girls' stories.

"The problem is that nothing came of it," he said.

The girls testified in general terms at the hearing that their mother charged $25 for the sex and told them she spent the money in slot machines.

"They were terrified" during the testimony, said Stefenel, to the point that one of the girls told their caretaker later "I didn't know what I answered on most of the questions."

But, Stefenel said, the girls remain "adamant that the charges are true."

A similar case against Behymer has been passed on to Southern California authorities, and she still could face charges there.

While Abood fumed at what he said were unwarranted prosecutions, he marveled that Behymer's concerns and questions throughout the ordeal were about her children.

"I can't be mad at my children," Behymer said. "They were coerced into saying things that were not true. Someone else put words into their mouths but I don't want them to feel guilty about that."

Behymer knows she is one of society's marginal individuals, destined to bend to the influences of others, scrapping and scraping to get along.

In Las Vegas in 1992, she said she and the girls lived in a shelter and collected cans for a living.

"I was an easy target," Behymer said. "But I considered myself a good mother. I made sure my children had what they needed ... food ... clean clothes."

"She was a fine mother, not a traditional mother, but a fine mother," Abood emphasized.

Behymer said she likes who she is and doesn't plan to change.

But she also knows there have been consequences for her daughters because of the way she lived.

Both daughters, in fact, were sexually abused, although Abood said it was at the hands of two boyfriends, not the "johns" in Las Vegas and Southern California that federal authorities originally alleged.

Abood noted, however, that when the girls told their mother of the mistreatment, she called authorities.

Evidence of that sexual abuse was used by federal authorities to bolster their criminal charges of pandering against Behymer.

The sexual abuse issue undoubtedly will resurface at a custody hearing, although Behymer believes the girls should have a say about where they live after learning her side of the story.

"If they don't want to live with me, that's fine, but I want them to have a choice of seeing me," she said. "And if they don't want to see me, that's all right ... but I do miss them so much."

She said she worries about the girls' futures because "this will affect them forever. It's part of them."

Abood also has concerns about the girls' futures, although for different reasons.

He predicted the girls one day "will come to realize that they didn't tell the truth about their mom and the guilt will switch."

"They will say, 'I can't believe we did this to our mother.' "

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