“The jury found him guilty, but the judge was underwhelmed with the merits and threw the case out for insufficiency of evidence.”
“They’re overturning juries now,” Robert said with disgust.
“There was a decided lack of physical evidence,” Dumone said. “Nothing in Knoll’s medical records. The search of Dobbins’s apartment turned up nothing. The case detective noted a stack of pornography in a bathroom cabinet. Several issues of the magazine Barely Legal.”
“I know it well,” Ananberg said. Six sets of eyes fastened on her. Mitchell looked distinctly annoyed; Tim alone wore a half smile.
“Pornography don’t mean shit,” Robert said. “What else? What about the medical reports on the other girls?”
The Stork raised his hand, his eyes, shiny through his glasses, focused on the sheet in front of him. “Medical examinations were inconclusive. No tearing, no scarring, no bruising, no bleeding, no trauma associated with penetration.”
“But penetration was just digital,” Mitchell said. “That would cause less trauma.”
“On a five-year-old girl, something would still be detectable,” Ananberg said.
“How long after the alleged molestation were the girls examined?” Tim asked.
The Stork flipped a sheet over. “Two weeks.”
“Plenty of healing time.”
“Especially if there were just superficial tears or light bruising,” Mitchell added.
“No DNA, no nothing?” Ananberg asked. “Anywhere?”
Rayner shook his head. “No.”
“So the whole case hung on the girls’ testimony? Do you have the interrogation tapes?”
Rayner pulled two tapes from his briefcase. “I got hold of them a few weeks ago.” He crossed the room and slid the first one into a VCR hidden in a dark wood cabinet. “The supervising DA and I were in Ivy together.” Off the others’ puzzled expressions, he added, “My eating club at Princeton.”
The tape quality was poor; the recording jerked a bit, and the lighting washed out the interview room to whites and yellows. A young girl sat on a plastic chair, her heels resting at the seat’s edge, her knees drawn up to her chin.
The interviewer-presumably a Suspected Child Abuse and Neglect social worker-sat on a low footstool, facing the girl. “…and so he touched you?”
The girl hugged her legs, clasping her hands midway up her shins. “Yes.”
“Okay, you’re doing a good job, Lisa. Did he touch you somewhere you didn’t want him to?”
“No.”
A frown appeared on the social worker’s face, a barely noticeable furrowing between her eyebrows. Her voice was soft and reassuring. “Are you sure you’re not scared to answer, sweetheart?”
Lisa rested her chin on her knees. Her head bounced a few times before Tim realized she was chewing gum. “Not scared.”
“Okay. Then I’ll ask you again…” Calm, drawn-out sentences. “Did he touch you somewhere on your lower body?”
A tiny voice, almost inaudible. “Yes…”
The social worker’s face softened with empathy. “Where? Can you show me on these dolls?” Two puppets appeared almost instantly from the social worker’s bag, complete with shiny polyester genitalia.
Lisa studied them tentatively before reaching out to take them. She made the male puppet hold hands with the little girl puppet, then looked up at the social worker.
“Okay…then what?”
Lisa arranged the puppets in an embrace.
“Okay…and after that?”
Lisa chewed her gum thoughtfully for a moment, then put the male puppet’s hand on the little girl’s chest.
“Very good, Lisa. Very good. And that’s how Peggie told you she was touched also?”
Lisa nodded solemnly.
Rayner looked troubled. He exchanged a glance with Ananberg, who shook her head, unimpressed. “Let’s watch the rest of the interviews first,” he said.
Occasionally fast-forwarding, they made their way through the following six interviews, each of which featured similar questioning techniques by the same social worker.
When the last girl finished tearfully recounting her molestation, Rayner stopped the tape. “It was a damn witch-hunt. No wonder the judge threw out the verdict.”
“What are you talking about?” Robert said. “Every one of those girls said they were molested. They even acted it out on the dolls.”
“The social worker asked leading questions, Rob,” Dumone said. “It’s fine for us, trying to pull a confession, but kids are more impressionable. They parrot.”
“How were the questions leading?”
“For starters, there weren’t any general questions,” Ananberg said. “Like ‘What happened?’ The social worker was prompting, implanting all the information through closed, suggestive questions. So ‘Did he touch you below the belt?’ turns into ‘Where did he touch you below the belt?’ And she was conditioning the girls, rewarding them for the answers she wanted to hear-smiling, saying ‘Good,’ telling them it’s okay.”
“And frowning when she didn’t like what she heard,” Rayner added. “If a girl gave the ‘wrong’ answer, she was subjected to repeated questioning-and the interviewer’s tacit disapproval-until she made something up.”
Tim glanced through the files at the badly photocopied detective notes. “The girls were in the same circles. Parents knew each other. After the first accusation, there were meetings between the families, conferences at school. Cross-pollination. These recorded interviews happened later. The witnesses weren’t exactly working from a clean slate.”
“And who knows how many other opportunities there were to have memories implanted and reinforced?” Ananberg added. “Other kids, media…” She spun her hand in a double loop, a gestured et cetera.
“What about the dolls?” Mitchell said.
“Same criticisms apply,” Rayner said. “On top of which, anatomically correct dolls are not recommended to be used with very young children.”
“Only with the elderly,” Ananberg said.
Robert fixed her with a piercing stare. “This isn’t a fucking joke.” He gestured to his brother. “Not to us.”
“I don’t think she meant anything,” Dumone said.
“No, he’s right.” Ananberg ran her hand through her dark brown hair. “I’m sorry. Just trying to defuse the tension in here. It’s a, uh, tough topic.”
“If you can’t handle tough topics, maybe you’re in the wrong place.”
“Robert. She apologized,” Tim said. “Let’s keep moving.”
Ananberg returned to her usual briskly professional tone. “According to the Ceci and Bruck study published in 1995, questioning young children with anatomically correct dolls is less than reliable.”
Mitchell glanced up from the court file. “Who cares about the dolls? According to this, the guy confessed.”
“The confession was persuasively called into question by the defense,” Rayner said. He strode over to the VCR and switched tapes.
The cold light of a police interrogation room. The camera caught some glare from the backside of a one-way mirror. Mick Dobbins sat hunched in a metal folding chair while two detectives worked him. Despite his solid frame and broad shoulders, his orientation was distinctly youthful. His arms hung loose and heavy between his spread knees, and his left sneaker was untied, his foot turned on its side. One of his overalls straps had come undone; it swayed at his side like a yoyo waiting to be snapped up.
The detectives had the lights going hot, one of them always staying just out of Dobbins’s view, to his side, behind his back. Dobbins kept his head hung but tried to follow the detectives with his eyes, which peered nervously through the sweat-matted tangle of his bangs. His low-set ears protruded from his oddly rectangular head like opposing coffee-mug handles.
“So you like girls?” the detective asked.
“Yeah. Girls. Girls ’n’ boys.” When Dobbins spoke, his mild retardation was immediately apparent in his low register and plodding cadence.
“You like girls a lot, don’t you? Don’t you?” The detective raised a foot, placed it squarely on the small patch of metal chair exposed between Dobbins’s legs. Dobbins lowered his head more, tucking his chin into the hollow of his shoulder. The detective leaned forward, his face inches from the top of Dobbins’s head. “I asked you a question. Tell me about them, tell me about the girls. You like them? You like girls?”