Читать книгу The Defilers - Deborah Gyapong - Страница 10

Chapter 8: The Molested

Back at my place I slid the kettle on the hot part of the stove and arranged the Rex Dare files on the kitchen table. First, I read the lawyers’ summations at the end of the trial transcript.

According to Crown Prosecutor Michael Ross Rex Dare had orchestrated the ritual sexual abuse of a group of five children. One of them was his daughter Becky. Though Rex hadn’t actually taken part in the sexual acts himself, he had procured the children for other adults. All of the children were violated, some of them repeatedly. What I read revolted me. But I had to admit the prosecution didn’t have much of a case. The children’s testimony was contradictory and the adults’ was bizarre and unbelievable. The chief witness was Rex’s ex-wife Cindy.

Rex had a first-class lawyer from Halifax. He tore the children’s testimony to shreds because the Crown had no corroborating evidence. Through expert witnesses he showed how the evidence resembled the lies and accusations in the daycare trials of the 1980s when satanic ritual abuse, or SRA, was the fad and many innocent people went to jail. He brought forward evidence from the ’90s when these cases were discredited. Rex’s lawyer tore apart the social worker Margaret Roach. An expert from the United States said Roach’s leading questions planted suggestions in the witnesses’ minds. Another expert described how rumours of satanic ritual abuse are a form of hysteria overwhelming a community experiencing other stresses, such as high unemployment. Well, Sterling County had its share of economic problems. Where had Rex found the money to mount a defence like this?

I opened a cardboard file from the detachment evidence room. Among the file folders were several videos labelled with the names of the five violated children. I popped Becky Dare’s tape into the VCR.

A blonde five-year-old girl came on the screen. She resembled Becky, the little girl I’d seen that day at the church, but much younger. Instead of that simpering, sexually precocious child the video showed a frightened, vulnerable, deeply traumatized little girl. I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees. These are the tapes of Margaret Roach’s interviews the judge had ruled inadmissible.

“Did your daddy touch you on your private parts?” Margaret asked off-camera.

“No.” Becky squirmed. She seemed uncomfortable. Scared.

“Did your daddy tell other men to touch you on your private parts?”

“My daddy was the devil.” Her remarks were odd, as if she were describing what he wore for Halloween. Her eyes had glassed over.

“Did your daddy kill a baby?”

“The baby was on fire. I have to go potty.” She was acting coy and squirming.

There was a moment of static, then Becky was back on-camera five minutes later according to the time code.

“What happened when your daddy killed the baby?”

“He was the devil. He danced around a fire. He tied me up.”

“What happened when he tied you up?”

“A man with a donkey head hurt me.”

“How did he hurt you, Becky? Can you show me with these dolls?”

It took several minutes as Margaret coached Becky using anatomically correct dolls to piece together what sounded like an orgy involving men wearing animal masks, dancing around a fire, and sexually abusing Becky and the other children. Yes, the social worker was asking leading questions, but Becky’s testimony deeply disturbed me.

Toward the end of the interview something happened to Becky that gave me chills. The shy little girl transformed into a brazen foul-mouthed gnome. An Academy Award-winning actor could not have done a better job. Suddenly, she was talking about sexual acts most adults have never heard of in the most eerie, repulsive way imaginable. Was this multiple personality disorder? I had read about it, but had never seen anything like this. I clutched the recliner’s leather arms, my palms clammy. No wonder ignorant, superstitious people confused mental illness with demonic possession.

The tape creeped me out so much I checked the locks on the doors and turned on every light downstairs. Then I listened to the other children’s interviews. One described Rex as a priest with a long black robe. They all mentioned a baby, but one said it was thrown into the fire, another said its head was cut off. Still another said it was stabbed. It sounded to me like these kids had watched too many heavy metal videos or cheap horror movies.

Margaret Roach praised the children every time they made a lurid accusation. She did seem to be rewarding them for giving the answers she wanted.

There were three consistent elements in the children’s testimonies. Rex Dare played some role, though what he was described as doing varied wildly. Each of the children did show physical evidence of repeated sexual abuse.

The abuse involving Rex allegedly took place in the “Pizza House.” Where was that? I thumbed through the more than three hundred pages of transcripts. I searched the evidence envelopes and found some photographs of a corrugated metal Quonset hut that had previously housed a pizza franchise. The sign was partially missing, but I could see the word “pizza.”

Photos showed the building was gutted to the bare metal inside. The fixtures, wallboards, and wiring had all been removed. I recalled passing this building, which was on a back road to Sterling. Its big plate glass windows were now boarded up. The defence summary said the police had found no evidence to link the children to this Pizza House. Not a fibre, not a hair, not a drop of blood.

The prosecutor declared Becky’s mom Cindy, a former prostitute and alcoholic, a hostile witness. The children’s statements to police differed wildly from their video interviews. The judge had no choice but to throw the case out of court.

I noted the names of the officers. Of course Will Bright was one of them. The other officer was Corporal Earl Broadfoot who was no longer at the detachment.

The phone rang. Catherine. She pleaded with me to come over to stay with Grace so she could go to dinner at George Hall’s. I knew she wanted to see Rafe, and that made me annoyed and uncomfortable. On the other hand I was ready for something to eat, and Catherine’s fridge would be full of goodies. And any time with Grace was precious to me. So, I set my uneasiness aside, rounded up some files to read after Grace fell asleep, and headed next door.

Grace and I played checkers and watched “The Simpsons.” I helped myself to leftovers in the fridge and later made microwave popcorn. We curled up on the den couch together under an afghan made of brightly coloured squares. When she fell asleep I carried her to bed.

I read more trial transcripts from an unwieldy stack of copies until I dozed off. When I awoke at 2:03 a.m. Catherine still wasn’t home. Uncertain whether to be worried or angry, I picked up the phone on the end table to make sure an extension hadn’t been left off the hook by accident. Dial tone. I threw some more wood into the stove in the kitchen, banked the stove in the den, and closed down the dampers. Then headlights swept the front hall and car tires crunched the gravel in the laneway. I walked over to the window and saw Catherine’s Toyota wagon roll to a stop by the back door.

I folded the afghan on the couch, gathered up my files, and reached the kitchen just as Catherine stepped through the back door carrying her boots and grinning.

I didn’t grin back. “It’s two o’clock in the morning. I was worried about you.”

“Sorry to be so late, but, oh, Linda, I had such a good time. Please don’t be mad!”

“Why didn’t you call?” I opened the door to the mud room and took my jacket off the hook.

“I tried to call – I meant to call you when I left George’s. I ended up going for a drive with Rafe. Then we stopped and talked. I didn’t realize how late it was.”

Catherine laughed. She smelled of wine and cigarettes. “Come on, let’s have a nightcap. I want to tell you what happened.”

“Tell me tomorrow.” My coat on, I scooped up the files and headed home.

“I really am sorry,” she called after me, sounding like she really meant it. But I didn’t have the stomach for hearing her swoon over Rafe.

When I unlocked my back door the phone was ringing. I hung up my jacket and took off my boots, in no hurry to answer in case it was Catherine. Let her stew. It continued to ring. I padded into the kitchen on sock feet, flicked on the ceiling light, and picked up the receiver. “Hello.”

“Hello, Constable Donner?” asked a resonant male voice on a line full of static.

“Who is this?” I glanced at my watch. Two-seventeen a.m.

“David Jordan. Sorry to call so late, but I’ve been trying to reach you all evening. I want to report someone missing.”

“Why are you calling me?”

“Remember the woman you saw running into the woods the other day? Becky’s mom? She never came back that afternoon to pick up her daughter. She’s gone missing.”

“Not much I can do right now. You can go in tomorrow and file a missing person report.” My colleagues would already be looking for Cindy since her cabin had been roped off. What was David up to in calling me? How did he get my unlisted number?

“Can you meet me tomorrow?”

“What for?”

“I can’t talk about it over the phone.”

I considered for a moment whether it was wise given Karen’s explicit orders to take days off. But no one besides me considered David a suspect, so I arranged to meet him at Cornwallis Cove Baptist Church in the morning when the service ended.

I had to get to the bottom of this.