Cessarina, January 2006

Cessarina is not her real name, and January 25 isn't her birth date exactly, but the age is the same.  She was a Dominican girl whose child sex abuse case I handled in the Bronx in January of 2006.  The case, and the girl, came to me in the usual way.  We called new cases "white folders" in the Bronx; each was one of the thousands of 11x17 heavy paper files that were generated in response the bad things that happened on the streets below us every year.  Assuming they were reported to NYPD.Cessie's was just one of them, generated in the florescent-lit, linoleum floored hell scape of the Complaint Room, the dirty office space in the courthouse on 161st street where cases were drawn up and charged by ADA's on rotating shifts.   An 11 year-old girl at the time of the report, she had been continuously molested by her mother's boyfriend over the course of about two years.  Like many children, Cessie kept the abuse to herself until she simply couldn't anymore.  Something broke when she saw that her younger sister- approaching eight- was probably moving into the attraction zone of the man who was molesting her.  It has never failed to amaze me how the instincts of a female child, completely unschooled in the pathology of a sex offender, can be so viciously keen in connecting the dots so many others miss.  Cessie knew her little sister was probably in danger.  The weight of it all become too much.  Cessie told her mother that the stepfather, Ramon, was abusing her.  The mother, thankfully, followed up and brought Cessie to the 46 Precinct and filed a report.  Then to the Complaint Room, to sign the charging document under the cruel lights in a dusty cubicle amid the cacophony of suffering crime victims, bored ADA's and tired cops. The stepfather was arrested the next morning, and held on a bond he could not make.Under New York law, if a defendant is in custody, the government must present the case to a grand jury within five days or the defendant is "cut" or released.  Cassie's case was set for a grand jury appearance on the fifth day out, and I met her that morning.  She arrived at my office to be prepped for her grand jury testimony in a jean jacket and a pink top.  She was pretty, polite and quiet, a kid without much guile or much to say outside of what I asked her.  But there was a steeliness to Cessarina.  Her hair was tightly pulled back into a pony tail, and her eyes were coal black.   The curving brow that ran above them reminded me spookily of a milder Frida Kahlo.  Her posture, especially for a budding adolescent, was impeccable.  She sat perfectly still and straight, her small, beige hands folded daintily in her lap.  She was quietly- perhaps desperately- proud.  And self-possessed.  I didn't spend a lot of time building rapport with Cessie, although that's what a child sex prosecutor is supposed to do.  It didn't look like she needed or wanted that.  Instead I got mostly to the point."Cessie, do you know why you're here?""Yes.  Because my stepfather has been touching me.  In a bad way.""Yes, that's right.  And it's my job to help you tell what happened to a group of people today- they're called the grand jury.  They decide if the case should go on to another court.  Does that make sense?""Yes."She was a dream witness.  So much better than most adults I've dealt with.  We went over the facts I needed to elicit that day, and then I walked with her and her mother across the street to the building that housed the grand jury.  Her mother had the look of a flood victim; dazed and exhausted.  She was polite but didn't seem truly engaged.  When the three of us arrived at the grand jury area, I had them wait on the wooden benches in the witness room while I jockeyed for position in the one of the grand jury panels.  We finally got our courtroom.The grand jury chambers in the Bronx resemble large, dirty, college classrooms.  The grand jurors repose there in rows behind desks with newspapers, donuts, dime novels and stained coffee mugs, waiting to hear their next case.  I went in first, gave them a snapshot of the case, and then officially put it on the record.  Cessie was my only witness.  I called her into the chamber.  She looked out on the faces of 28 of her fellow Bronx citizens and then looked at me impassively.  What now? I asked her to have a seat in the witness chair, a rickety, red plastic thing, and she complied.  She was sworn in and asked kindly by the court reporter to keep her voice up so that everyone could hear her.The first questions asked of almost every child witness is how old they are.  Their age is usually an element of the crime, so we get it out first.  As closely as I can remember it, this is how it went."Cesserina," I said, "can you tell the members of the grand jury how old you are?""Twelve," she answered plainly.  I should have picked up on it, but I didn't.  The reports all said 11.  The answer seemed reasonable, so I pressed on."And what is your date of birth, Cessarina?"Again, plainly, she answered "January 25, 1994."  She sat in the lousy chair the same way she had sat in my office; eyes front, posture perfect, chin just a little lifted.  Now, something in me woke up.   It was January 25, 2006.  I looked at the file, seeing the date of birth.  Reading it for the first time.  How the hell did I miss this? "Cesserina," I said slowly, "you were born on this day in 1994?"  The ghost of a grin crept to her small face.  She nodded.  A few of the grand jurors woke up, and leaned forward."H-happy birthday," I said, almost too quietly for the court reporter to hear.  Cessie looked back at me, the grin now gone, but a peaceful sort of contentedness in its place."Thanks," she said brightly."Okay then," I said, "let's get this over with."I don't know how many times Cessarina's birth date was recorded during the process between the 46 PCT and my office.  I don't know why no one flagged it.  We all heard her, although I guess none of us listened to her- not about something as simple and profound as her birthday, anyway.  Cessarina had appeared before a grand jury, to explain how a man more than three times her age was touching her in unholy places on a regular basis while she turned to the wall and concentrated on cracks there to make the moment pass.On her 12th birthday.Her mother knew.  But we never discussed it.  The day Cessie had to testify to the worst moments of her life was the day marking her birth, period.  And so here she was.  No one was bitter.  No one was indignant.  Least of all Cessie.The man who molested Cessarina pleaded, eventually, to what we called a 'split,' or an 18 month split with 10 years probation.  18 months was the time he'd serve.  10 years was post-confinement supervision, plus sex offender registration. It was, unfortunately, a typical sentence for an intra-family sex offense in the Bronx with a child.  We were not in Provo, Utah.  We were in the Bronx, where the mill of crime and punishment turned everything into fungible grist, needing processing, often as bland and seamless as on any assembly line.I don't think of the man much- the man who molested Cessie.  He was typical and mundane and nothing out of the ordinary for a predator.  God only knows what trouble he's found since his short turn in corrections, brought about because of his near destruction of Cessarina.  But I think of Cessarina fairly often.  I think of her lifted chin, arrow-straight posture and modest, folded hands.  I think of her on her birthday, and I offer up a silent prayer that the birthdays she's known since have been kinder.