THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, August 31, 1995 TAG: 9508310418
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JUNE ARNEY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 165 lines
The father remembers that chilling telephone call from his mother in February - his 12-year-old daughter had left the house without permission.
The grandmother had told the girl she couldn't attend a neighborhood dance at a recreation center two miles away. Now she feared that was exactly where the girl was headed.
The father, who was living in Atlanta at the time, waited by the phone for news that his daughter had been found. It didn't come.
By 9 p.m., with the girl still missing, he grew more worried.
``When I hung up the phone that time, a feeling of panic started coming over me because it was late,'' he said. But that was only the beginning. By the end of the search, he would find his daughter himself, in the bedroom of a vacant apartment - along with a man who was pulling up his pants.
The family would journey into the horrors of rape - perhaps by as many as nine youths over a 24-hour period. Of AIDS tests and successful treatment for a sexually transmitted disease. They would wonder whether the girl, who had been given a haircut and different clothes, was being groomed for prostitution.
This is the tale of a father and family coming to terms with what happened that winter night. It's the story of a child who had turned 12 only seven days earlier. About the quiet that sometimes creeps over her now, the struggles with low self-esteem and the haunting feeling that somehow she's to blame.
It's a story of the family's worry that the girl will have trouble forming healthy relationships with men. Of a father's urge to kill, and his frustration with a legal system that seems, to him, to make the victim a victim again.
The parents agreed to talk to The Virginian-Pilot because they wanted to keep this from happening to anyone else. Because the newspaper does not identify victims of sex crimes, the family's name has not been used.
On Feb. 17, the father, 38, didn't know all that was to come. He was an artist who had opened a studio in Atlanta while his daughter finished the school year in Norfolk. He had raised the girl and her brother by himself from the time they were babies until 1990, when he married his current wife.
When his mother called again at 10:30 that night and said she was calling police, he knew he would be driving to Norfolk.
``Now, I was at a level-10 panic,'' he said. ``It was a completely helpless feeling. I hung up the phone, and I just started praying. I've never prayed like that before. I felt sick.''
At midnight, his mother called and said the police had taken a statement and put his daughter's name and age on a national runaway hotline. An officer would be by in the morning to get a picture and a description of the child.
The trip - which usually takes eight hours - took 12 in the pouring rain.
The father arrived in Norfolk about 2 p.m. the next day. He went to his mother's house, then to the Norview Recreation Center where the dance was held the night before. No one had seen his daughter. That frightened him even more.
He took his daughter's picture to Kinko's Copies, where employees designed, typed and printed 300 fliers for free.
He, his wife and a friend plastered the Norview neighborhood with fliers. He was driving down Sewells Point Road near Norview High School when he realized fliers weren't enough.
So he stopped and knocked on a door. A stranger answered.
Yes, the stranger told him - he did recognize the girl. He had seen her standing in front of his house the night before. He watched as she got out of a white van and walked off with about five guys toward some abandoned houses.
``Abandoned houses, 12-year-old child, gone for 24 hours - it doesn't sound good to me,'' the father thought.
Yet the abandoned houses were locked up tight. He drove through a nearby apartment complex and handed out fliers. Suddenly, he got a bad feeling as he drove by one apartment.
His wife and friend teased him about being psychic. He shook off the premonition, he said.
The father went back to his mother's house. Within five minutes, he received a phone call from a girl who knew his daughter was missing. She gave him the address where his daughter could be found.
He rushed to the location and found the caller waiting to show him the apartment. It was in a rundown area of Norview called ``The Hole,'' notorious for murders, drugs and robberies. She told him that people had been partying in the supposedly vacant apartment all weekend long.
Suddenly he realized it was the same apartment that had caused his premonition 15 minutes earlier. He knocked on the door, and another door slammed inside.
He didn't wait to hear more. He kicked in the apartment door. He and his wife saw a door opening at the end of a hallway.
``A guy walks out of the bedroom, pulling up his pants,'' the father said.
Inside that empty room, his daughter lay on the beige carpet. She was pulling on a shirt and seemed to be in shock. He grabbed the man.
``I brought him outside,'' he said. ``I've got him pinned on the concrete with my knee in his chest. I looked into his eyes. I saw him. He thought he was dead. . . . If I hit him once, I was going to kill him.''
He could feel a crowd gathering; when he looked back, he saw about 20 youths standing nearby. One looked as if he would swing at him.
So the father stood up. ``Don't make me kill anybody out here,'' he said. ``I don't want to kill anybody.''
The crowd scattered.
His wife hurried his daughter to the car and then to DePaul Medical Center for treatment. The girl told investigators she had been assaulted by 10 youths, nine of whom had intercourse with her.
Seven juveniles, the youngest 14, have since been charged with rape and their cases transferred to adult court. Five are appealing to keep their cases in Juvenile Court. The names of the juveniles could not be confirmed for this story.
Two adults also were charged. Darrell Cuffee, 20, pleaded guilty to statutory rape on July 19 and will be sentenced on Sept. 20. In his statement to police, Cuffee said he had sex with the girl after she suggested it. He had tried to get her to leave before they had sex and again afterward, he said.
At one point, he said he offered to call her family. But she told him not to call. ``They didn't care about her or love her,'' he said the girl told him.
John R. Doyle III, the lawyer representing Cuffee, said his client did not realize how young the girl was or that he was committing a crime.
``When he agreed to have sex with her, that was terrible judgment,'' Doyle said. ``I think he just hopes that his sentence will be a fair reflection of his level of culpability.''
Yet even if the 12-year-old did consent to sex, her age legally invalidates that consent. The charge is rape, and the maximum sentence for an adult is life. Juveniles may be committed to a juvenile correctional center up to age 21.
Darrell Cuffee's twin brother, Derrick, 20, is charged with indecent liberties, a lesser charge than rape. The father identified Derrick as the man he had caught pulling up his pants at the apartment and perhaps prevented from having sex with his daughter.
Derrick Cuffee is scheduled for trial Oct. 20.
A 10th suspect has not been identified.
The father awaits these trials nervously. ``I'm really worried about someone slipping through the cracks,'' he said. ``I think that all these boys should pay for what they've done. My daughter paid dearly for the mistake she made.''
Although there were no arrests for nine days after the assault, the father forced himself to be patient.
``Just like I found my daughter, I could have found every one of them,'' he said. ``To them, what they did was cool. `We got us a 12-year-old.' I want them to pay.''
Yet in the end, the worst thing for him was ``knowing that these men have taken my daughter's childhood away from her,'' he said.
``I'm not the type to go around preaching, but I know for a fact there was an angel with me that night and there was an angel with her,'' the father said. ``My biggest feeling was that I didn't protect my child. But you can't be everywhere with your children all the time. I beat myself up for a while. But you have to live through it, learn from it and make something positive come from it.''
The 12-year-old will go to school out of state this year, her father said. She now goes to therapy once a week.
``It's hard to bring back the child in her after going through that,'' her father said. ``It's a healing process that will take the rest of her life. She's been given a life sentence.''
KEYWORDS: RAPE JUVENILE STATUTORY RAPE ASSAULT by CNB