Sexual assault case tried despite recanting of girl

Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2003 | 9:10 a.m.

The fate of a man charged with repeatedly sexually assaulting his stepdaughter depends on testimony the alleged victim later recanted.

The question the jury will have to answer is whether she recanted because the assaults never happened, as the defense maintains, or whether she recanted, as prosecutors have argued, because she feared the repercussions to her and her family if her stepfather went to jail.

The alleged victim told her mother at least four times between ages 9 and 17 that her stepfather had tried to force her or forced her to have sexual intercourse, the victim's mother testified Monday on the first day of the jury trial in District Judge Joseph Bonaventure's courtroom.

The girl also accused her stepfather of impregnating her, causing her to have an abortion at age 13 or 14, the mother said.

Each time the girl, now a woman of 20 with a family of her own, recanted, the girl's mother testified. Every time her daughter accused her now ex-husband of sexual abuse it was when she was in trouble and wanted to get her way, the mother said.

"It became a pattern of her lying, not only about this but about other things," she said.

Although the girl's mother testified that her daughter would recant every time she made an allegation of sexual abuse, Special Prosecutor John Lukens said the girl did not recant the story she told prosecutors until her mother was charged with child abuse and neglect for allegedly ignoring the allegations.

Luken argued that the girl's allegations are true, and that she only recanted because of family pressure, lack of support and fear of what would happen to her family if the main breadwinner went to jail.

Prosecutors dropped the charges against the mother on Monday morning in exchange for her testimony. They also reduced the number of charges against the stepfather from 38 to nine, including sexual assault with a minor under 14, sexual assault with a minor under 16 and coercion for assaults that allegedly took place between 1991 and 2000. The charges were reduced to simplify the case, Lukens said.

Lukens was called in as special prosecution because three of the witnesses are prosecutors who will testify that the alleged victim told them of multiple sexual assaults over the course of nine years.

The mother testified that she never believed her daughter when she made the allegations because the girl always recanted and she trusted the stepfather when he said he "would never do anything like that."

She said that every time she confronted him, he would tell her to "take her to the doctor." When she did, doctors could not make any definite findings, she said. Dr. David Corwin, a psychiatrist in child sexual abuse and an expert witness in the case, said only 5 percent of victims, especially those going through puberty, ever show definite physical signs of abuse.

When her daughter became pregnant at 13 or 14 and told her mother that her stepfather was the child's father, then recanted and said it was another boy, the mother said she thought the allegation was another lie. The mother never reported the allegations to the police nor did she ask for DNA testing to be done to establish paternity before the baby was aborted, she said in court.

"Wouldn't you want to know if your daughter was the victim of a crime?" Lukens asked her during direct examination.

"Yes, I would," the mother said. "But she wasn't."

Even though the mother testified she thought her daughter was lying about the allegations, she also said the "thought was planted in my mind." She started going out of her way to keep her daughter from being alone with her husband, but she did not call police until the stepfather allegedly attempted to assault her daughter again March 27, 2000, after their divorce, she said.

She testified Monday that she was wrong to call police and that her daughter was never assaulted. The alleged victim maintains that she made the allegations up, Lukens said. She is expected to testify Wednesday when the trial resumes.