I'm starting to see why so many people fear this.
The witness box is so small my knees bump up against the front. The stares of a couple hundred people poke at me, tiny needles. I think of what I have told thousands of witnesses during my career: Your job is to do three things: Listen to the question, answer the question, and stop talking. I remember something my boss used to say all the time-that the best witnesses were truck drivers and assembly line workers because they were far less likely to run off at the mouth than, for example, overeducated lawyers.
Fisher hands me the restraining order I took out against Caleb. "Why did you procure this, Nina?"
"I thought at the time that Nathaniel had identified my husband as the person who'd sexually abused him."
"What did your husband do to make you believe this?"
I find Caleb in the gallery, shake my head. "Absolutely nothing."
"Yet you took the extraordinary step of getting a restraining order to prevent him from seeing his own child?"
"I was focused on protecting my son. If Nathaniel said this was the person who hurt him . . . well, I did the only thing I could to keep him safe."
"When did you decide to terminate the restraining order?" Fisher asks.
"When I realized that my son had been signing the word father not to identify Caleb, but to identify a priest."
"Is that the point where you believed Father Szyszynski was the abuser?"
"It was a lot of things. First, a doctor told me that anal penetration had occurred. Then came Nathaniel's hand sign. Then he whispered a name to Detective Ducharme that sounded like 'Father Glen.' And finally, Detective Ducharme told me he'd found my son's underwear at St. Anne's." I swallow hard.
"I've spent seven years putting together pieces to make cases that will stand up in court. I was just doing what seemed absolutely logical to me."
Fisher glares at me. Absolutely logical. Oh, damn.
"Nina, listen carefully to my next question, please," Fisher warns. "When you started to believe that Father Szyszynski was your son's abuser, how did you feel?"
"I was a mess. This was a man I'd trusted with my own beliefs and my family's beliefs. With my son. I was angry with myself because I'd been working so hard-if I'd been home more, I might have seen this coming. And I was frustrated because now that Nathaniel had identified a suspect, I knew the next step would be-"
"Nina," Fisher interrupts. Answer the question, I remind myself with a mental kick. Then shut up.
Brown smiles. "Your Honor, let her finish answering."
"Yes, Mr. Carrington," the judge agrees. "I don't believe Mrs. Frost is done."
"Actually I am," I say quickly.
"Did you discuss the best plan of action for your son with his psychiatrist?"
I shake my head. "There was no best plan of action. I've tried hundreds of cases involving child victims. Even if Nathaniel started speaking normally again, and got stronger . . . even if there were a year or two before the case went to trial . . . well, the priest never admitted to what he did. That means it all hinged on my son."
"What do you mean?"
"Without a confession, the only thing a prosecutor's got against the defendant is the child's testimony.
That means Nathaniel would have had to go through a competency hearing. He'd get up, in a room full of people like this, and say what that man had done to him. That man, of course, would be sitting six feet away, watching-and you can be sure that he's told the child, more than once, not to tell. But no one would be sitting next to Nathaniel and nobody would be holding him, nobody would be telling him it's okay to talk now.
"Either Nathaniel would be terrified and fall apart during this hearing, and the judge would rule him not competent to stand trial-which means that the abuser would never get punished ... or Nathaniel would be told he was able to stand trial-which means he'd have to go through it all over again in court, with the stakes cranked up a notch and a whole new set of people watching. Including twelve jurors predisposed to not believe him, because he's only a child." I turn to the jury. "I'm not all too comfortable here, now, and I've been in a courtroom every day for the past seven years. It's scary to be trapped in this box. It's scarring for any witness. But we were not talking about any witness. We were talking about Nathaniel."
"What about the best-case scenario?" Fisher asks gently. "What if, after all that, the abuser was put in jail?"
"The priest would have been in prison for ten years, only ten years, because that's what people with no criminal record get for destroying a child's life. He would have most likely been paroled before Nathaniel even hit puberty." I shake my head. "How can anyone consider that a best-case scenario?
How can any court say that would protect my son?"
Fisher takes one last look at me and requests a recess.
