THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, May 16, 1995 TAG: 9505160287
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JUNE ARNEY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 172 lines
The celebration looked like a typical party for a 9-year old, complete with yellow and blue balloons, chocolate cake and ice cream.
Grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins talked and laughed in the family room of the Virginia Beach home Sunday night. A cake on the dining room table, topped with white icing and pink rosebuds, said: ``We are proud of you Stephanie.''
But a greeting card nearby offered an unusual message. It pictured an angel sitting on a crescent moon showering stars on a little house below. ``You have a safe home and a good Mom and Dad to love you now,'' a family friend had written. ``Remember that they will always be there for you.''
Stephanie is rebuilding her life. She has a new family, and soon will have a new name - first, middle and last. New names she has chosen for her new life.
She was the victim in a sexual abuse case that experts say was one of the worst they've ever encountered, abuse at the hands of her biological parents. Other brothers and sisters were also allegedly abused by the parents, but charges were not pursued.
Stephanie had requested the party ``to make everyone feel better.'' It was the party to celebrate her mother going to jail - another step in the healing process.
Three days earlier, Stephanie's mother and father, whose names are not being used to protect their daughter's identity, pleaded guilty in Norfolk Circuit Court to three counts of aggravated sexual battery and one count of felony child abuse. Those charges carry a possible punishment of up to 70 years. But under the terms of a plea agreement, each can receive a maximum of 10 years in prison for their crimes.
``While it's not nearly enough to punish them for what they did, it gives Stephanie and the other kids some measure of security,'' said the 33-year-old Navy lieutenant who has been her foster father for more than two years. ``For the rest of her childhood years, she doesn't have to worry'' about her parents.
The man and his 35-year-old wife, who looks strikingly like Stephanie, are in the process of adopting her and her 7-year-old brother. Stephanie and her new parents all asked that her first name be used in the story.
Prosecutors said they offered the plea bargain at least in part to spare the victim the trauma of a trial. But Stephanie was disappointed that she didn't get to testify.
Initially the birth parents were accused of similar crimes against one of Stephanie's brothers, but a judge did not find probable cause during a hearing conducted by closed-circuit television.
Stephanie has five brothers and sisters in all: three sisters and two brothers.
Stephanie's new mother, who works in the billing department of an acute-care doctor's office, says no punishment would have been enough for her birth mother.
``She's ruined their lives,'' she said. ``Stephanie's whole character and spirit had to be stripped down and rebuilt. You think, `What kind of monster could have done this?' ''
The crimes were some of the worst that local prosecutors and attorneys have seen. They involved multiple forced sex acts with the parents, siblings and the family dog. As punishment, the parents forced Stephanie to put her head in an unflushed toilet.
The giggling little girl in jean shorts and a flowered top scurried around showing off her angel collection, her soccer trophy and a pink canopy bed at the party Sunday. Her troubled past seemed far away.
But the scars remain, and the anguish is never far from the surface. The third-grader says she thinks about what happened every day.
She is frightened to use a public restroom, where at any moment a toilet might flush nearby.
``It's kind of like a flashback,'' her new father says. ``She gets scared all over again when she hears that noise.''
On Thursday, Stephanie sat in the back row of the courtroom, cuddling her Chuckie doll from the ``Rugrats'' TV show with its big teeth, crop of orange hair and purple-rimmed glasses. It was a gift from her friends in the victim-witness office.
Sitting there in a frilly blue dress with a white bow in her dark brown hair, she watched as her birth mother and father stood before the judge and admitted to their crimes.
``She couldn't take the next step toward being happy until this was over with,'' said her new father. ``What she wanted more than anything else was for her mother to admit she'd done something wrong. She wanted (her mother) from her own mouth to say she was guilty.''
Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Lauri Hogge listed the crimes, which occurred in the family's home between Nov. 10 of 1989 and Nov. 10 of 1992:
The mother and father fondled Stephanie.
Both parents forced Stephanie to have sexual contact with them.
The parents made Stephanie fondle her brothers and sisters as they sat in a circle in the living room.
They made her put her head in a toilet as punishment.
Stephanie's birth father, 34, entered his pleas first. A man of slight build, one of seven brothers and sisters, has been living at the Union Mission for about two years. He told the judge he used to do construction but most recently worked as a dishwasher. He said he was on probation. He had pleaded guilty to sexual battery and received a suspended sentence more than 10 years ago, authorities said.
He is considered slow, perhaps borderline mentally retarded, according to authorities. He denies ever having been abused.
During the court proceeding, Stephanie's birth mother, 34, walked haltingly to the counsel table, struggling with a bad back, for which she must soon undergo surgery. The judge allowed her to sit as he asked her questions to make sure that she understood her guilty plea. She nodded and spoke barely audibly; the judge had to ask her to repeat herself.
The mother, trained as a nurse's aide, has a history of psychiatric problems, court records show. Authorities say that she has been diagnosed with manic depression and that she currently takes medication for her mental problems. They also said she was sexually abused by family members.
As Stephanie watched, her mother unfastened her watch to hand over to jailers, then followed deputies across the courtroom toward the lock-up.
Her sentencing hearing is set for June 20, the father's for June 22.
Part of what makes the case so horrifying is the number of acts and the period of time over which the abuse occurred, Hogge said.
``Any abuse to a child is horrible, but to abuse your own child?'' Hogge said. ``These are two people that she trusts, two people who are supposed to be taking care of her. What makes this worse is that it's the natural mother and the natural father.''
In anticipation of his court hearing, one of Stephanie's brothers, who now lives with a different family, became increasingly violent in his foster home, threatening to kill his foster parents' 4-year-old daughter, then holding her head under water in the swimming pool. He also ripped the heads off puppets during play time at school.
He told a counselor that his mother had made him touch a hot stove with his hand.
In trying to tell a therapist about his parents' forcing him into sexual behavior with the family dog, the boy went into a trance-like state. His eyes were open, but he was unable to speak for about 15 minutes.
In a psychiatric report, Stephanie described her mother forcing her to have sexual contact with the family dog. When that happened, Stephanie said she screamed.
Both children said their mother and father confined them to a closet, and gave them sleeping pills, according to court papers.
On more than one occasion, Stephanie's mother held her arms while her father took sexual liberties with her, she told a therapist.
A life once filled with strange and terrifying sex acts is now more typical of a little girl's: Cabbage Patch and Barbie dolls, family pictures of trips to Busch Gardens, slumber parties, and a Power Rangers birthday cake.
Stephanie still sees a therapist as often as once a week. But in the two years since she has lived in Virginia Beach with her new parents, she has taken ballet and played soccer and now has a yellow belt in tae kwon do. She loves to color and draw.
Her new parents learned about her abuse little by little, beginning after she had lived with them about a month.
She had bad dreams and called out in the night.
``It was just a matter of her trusting us enough to tell us,'' her new father said.
After a month or two, the nightmares stopped.
Well into her second piece of cake on Sunday, Stephanie said she decided to tell her new parents about the abuse because they took good care of her and she thought they could make the bad things go away.
She recommended that other children in her situation find someone they trust and tell them.
``If they don't tell someone, they'll grow up and it will be in there forever,'' Stephanie said. She thinks that's what happened to her birth mother.
Stephanie admits she still gets angry sometimes. She used to look in the mirror and see her mother's reflection. But that doesn't happen as often anymore.
Mostly she feels safe and happy.
``We've been trying to provide them with a normal family so they can see that being abused and being hurt is not how other children are treated,'' her new father said. ``We've spent a lot of time showing them what love is about.'' ILLUSTRATION: Fearing that she would be returned to her parents, Stephanie
drew this multicolored illustration on Aug. 8, 1993, for a therapist
and the judge in her parents' case.
KEYWORDS: SEXUAL ABUSE CHILD ABUSE PLEA GUILTY by CNB