Authors: Bill Rowe
Here Rosie stopped her narrative and cast her eyes down at the courtroom floor.
Lucy Barrett asked her to please go on and describe how the
sexual relationship she’d mentioned had started. Rosie began again in a low
voice, audible only because of the hush in the courtroom.
“The first evening back from California, he told my mother that I’d asked him
to drive me to the Avalon Mall to do some shopping for school. He’d gladly do
it, he said. My younger sister just wanted to go to bed, she was so tired, and
my mother would stay home with her. We set off in his Land Rover and he drove,
not to the Avalon Mall, but out Logy Bay Road, onto the Marine Drive and then up
the road to Red Cliff. He knew the way as if he was very familiar with it. He
had explored many off roads in his Land Rover, he told me. There, near the
cliff, he parked and kissed me passionately and said that tonight in my bed at
home he wanted to consummate our love for life, if I was willing. I told him I
was. I wanted to show my love to him very much. But what about Mom and Pagan?
Wouldn’t they hear us? He said that was why we had come out here, to be alone so
that we could plan the beginning of our wonderful adventure together. We didn’t
have to worry about the other two, because they would be sound asleep. But he
said we had to be very quiet, not make a sound. Could I promise that? Yes, I
said, I promise. Because, he said, that was another reason he had driven us out
here. To show me this cliff. If we ever got found out, he would have no choice
but to drive himself over this cliff and end his life, not only because he would
not be able to bear it if our love had to end, but he would not be able to bear
his own shame and my shame at people knowing that I as well as he had betrayed
my mother. In the light of all that, did I still want to consummate our love
tonight? Yes, I said, I wanted to more than anything else in the entire world.
He kissed me and we drove home. Mom and Pagan were already in bed sound asleep.
I got ready for bed immediately and he gave me an intense passionate look before
he kissed me good night on the forehead in his study.
“I lay awake in my bed thinking of our love and how one day we would fly away
together to Camelot or the Forest of Arden, when a soundless shadow loomed in
the moonlight from my half-open curtain. My heart gave a beat of joy. It was
him! He sat on the bed and whispered that he had come to say a final good night
because he had decided after thinking about it that our love was in fact
hopeless. I couldn’t see his face clearly, but I heard a catch in his voice. He
was silently weeping. Boldly I took his familiar, smooth, doctor’s hand in both
of mine and told him not to be sad, a day would come when our love could truly
express itself. I wanted to express it right now, I said, but I could
wait—forever if necessary. He lay back on
the bed and pulled me
to him and kissed me and caressed my hands and arms. As I was lying there in his
arms in a heavenly daze I felt his hands going down over my back and hips, and
then one of his hands was inside my nightdress and between my legs. I felt very
uncomfortable. This feeling was different from what was in my heart about
consummating our love. I didn’t have a clear idea about what that consummation
was, but this did not feel right. It was as if this had nothing to do with our
love. This was something alien, an invasion.
“Everything I felt for him was in my heart, but now his fingers were intruding
inside me down there as he whispered a constant stream of words of love. Then he
took a container of lubricant, of K-Y Jelly, out of the pocket of his bathrobe
and squeezed it onto his fingers and my pelvis. I couldn’t speak, even in a
whisper. I tried to sit up in bed, but he pressed me back and whispered we had
to be quiet or my mother would hear what I was doing out here. He forced my legs
apart with one hand and rubbed the lubricant all over everything down there and
inside me. I remember thinking I had to stop him and get out of the bed, but I
didn’t. I couldn’t. I stayed there and I said nothing. Then he put his hand over
my mouth and got on top of me and pushed his penis inside me while he whispered
in my ear how much he loved me. He knew what he was doing when he put his hand
over my mouth, because even with the lubrication, I would not have been able to
keep from screaming from the pain. After a while—I don’t know how long, it could
have been a minute or twenty minutes—he rolled off, saying he loved me and he
knew I loved him and how happy he was I’d let him know I wanted him in that way.
Then he said he was going to take his hand off my mouth and I was not to say
anything, just as I’d promised, since he didn’t want my mother to find out what
I had been doing with her husband.
“I lay there silently, crying as he comforted me and assured me of his
everlasting love, how glad he was I had told him of my love because he would
never have done that, he would never have come near me if I hadn’t signalled to
him my passionate love. He whispered to me that if my mother ever found out, she
would think I had betrayed her by leading her husband on, but that I was not to
worry because he would never tell her, and he knew I would never tell her
either, because if she ever found out, if anyone ever found out, we would be
separated, and he would be arrested and would have to kill himself to keep from
going to jail and it would be the end of our love forever. I lay there weeping
to myself, both over what we had done and at the thought of losing him. I
desperately did not want to
lose him. No matter what he had done
to me that night, I did not want our love to ever end.”
Rosie paused and there was a collective intake of breath in the courtroom. I
was numb. And I remained sitting there, senseless to everything but Rosie’s
words as she continued to answer Lucy Barrett’s questions. I couldn’t have
imagined then that Murray Dylan’s cross-examination had worse blows in
store.
The defence counsel questioned gently at first. His voice, even low, had a
penetrating and paced quality that made every word strike home. Rosie conceded
that her sister Pagan, then ten years old, had been in her own bedroom next to
hers on the nights she said Dr. Rothesay was sexually assaulting her, and that
Pagan had never once come to Rosie’s room or indicated she’d heard sounds from
there. “Now, Miss O’Dell, are you seriously asking us to believe,” Dylan went
on, “that if all the gross and painful and lustful sexual activity, which you
say happened, actually did take place in the room next to your sister’s in the
silent dead of night, she would not have heard it?”
“It’s too bad you can’t ask her yourself, but she is dead. My sister committed
suicide at the age of thirteen.”
“Simply answer my question, please.”
“You make it sound as if he and I were making a big racket,” Rosie replied.
“But we weren’t. He always insisted we be very quiet. ‘As quiet as two little
love doves, ’ he always whispered to me. Besides that, when I used to sleep in
the same room with my sister for years before this, she often complained that I
talked in my sleep. If sounds came from my own room later, she might have
thought that’s what she was hearing. It was Dr. Rothesay, incidentally, who
persuaded Mother just before they got married to give up her study so that my
sister and I could have separate rooms. It was healthier, he said.”
“I see. Uh huh. Your mother, then—”
“My healthy sister, whose dead body was found by Dr. Roth—”
“Objection,” said Dylan. “My Lady, it was clearly understood at our pretrial
conference that there would be no connection made between that unfortunate
discovery and the subject matter of this trial, as being absolutely irrelevant
and extremely prejudicial to the accused.”
“The witness was not trying to make any connection,” said Lucy. “She was
merely explaining why it is not possible to find out the answer to defence
counsel’s question from her dead sister at this stage.”
“Now, Ms. Barrett,” said the judge, “you know better than
that. The jury will please ignore any reference to who found the body.”
“Miss O’Dell, where would your mother be when you were enjoying—having sex with
her husband in your own bed nearly every night for months?”
“In her own bedroom about twenty feet down the hall.”
“So you are also asking us to believe that every night Dr. Rothesay would leave
his wife in their marital bed, proceed to your bedroom a few feet away, have sex
with you, and then blithely return to his marital bed beside her, all without
his wife, your mother, hearing anything or suspecting anything?”
“If Mother had suspected anything, she would have done something. Yes, that is
exactly what I’m asking you to believe.”
“Do you believe it yourself?”
Lucy Barrett jumped up. “Objection, My Lady. The question is offensive. If Mr.
Dylan wishes to accuse the complainant of perjury, he should be straightforward
about it and not try to weasel through the back door.”
“Ms. Barrett’s characterization of me is what is offensive, My Lady. I am
accusing nobody of perjury. I am perfectly prepared to accept the notion that
Miss O’Dell does believe her own story, however incredible it may be. When the
defence presents its case, I shall be proffering evidence of how false memories
can arise in such cases, and my question was preparatory to that.”
The judge said, “The witness will answer the question.”
“Yes, I believe it myself. I am here accusing my stepfather of unspeakable acts
and ripping an unhealable wound in my relationship with my mother because I
believe it myself. I believe it, unfortunately, because it happened. He would
tell me that if we were quiet my mother would not come in. I assumed it was
because she was still taking the sleeping pill she began to take after my
father’s death.”
“Your sister would think the sounds of gross sexual activity from your room
were you talking in your sleep and your mother would be knocked out on sleeping
pills. How very convenient for your story! Come, come, Miss O’Dell, we can do
better than that. How long would these nightly encounters last?”
“At night, only a few minutes. He would come in, whisper that he loved me, do
whatever he had in mind that night, whisper how much he loved me again, and
leave. If we happened to be in the house alone together, he
would take longer. Some Saturday afternoons, when my mother and sister were
out shopping, he would take his time and do everything and anything that might
occur to him for an hour or more. It was during those encounters that I found
out for the first time that he always wore a condom.”
“Did you ever say no or stop or that you were not going to do it
anymore?”
“Objection,” said Lucy Barrett. “Whether she ever said no or yes or stop or go
is entirely irrelevant. He was a thirty-six-year-old, six foot two,
two-hundred-pound adult male physician in a position of care and trust and
parenthood over her, and she was a twelve-year-old, five foot one,
ninety-six-pound female child in his care and trust and under his custody and
control. Consent does not enter into the matter except to show that if she did
consent it was because he criminally abused his trust and power over her to
exploit her.”
“I would agree,” said Dylan, “if any such activity were established by
credible evidence. But I am denying that the alleged abuse ever took place. I am
stating flatly that her story is a total fabrication, and in order to establish
our case, I must have leeway to probe her testimony widely and deeply to
ascertain the credibility or otherwise of her story.”
“Objection sustained,” said Judge Oona Ledrew. “Consent or lack of consent by
the complainant is irrelevant to these charges. If you wish to proceed along the
lines you just indicated, Mr. Dylan, do so very cautiously.”
“Miss O’Dell, this alleged sexual abuse, which you claim went on for several
months, how did you finally stop it?”
“I didn’t stop it. He stopped it. After Christmas vacation of my grade seven
year, when I was still twelve, about a month after we’d come back from a holiday
down south, he just stopped. He told me he was worried some friends and teachers
might be getting suspicious and that we should lie low until it was safe again.
He didn’t want me to get into trouble, he said. I argued with him that no one
was suspicious, no one had any idea what had been going on, our secret love was
safe.”
“We’ll find out later exactly what friends and teachers, indeed your own
mother, thought at the time. Did you ever resume your alleged sexual
relationship?”
“No. I wanted him to because I loved him and missed him so much, and I became
very depressed. But as the months went by, I started to come to my senses, and
my yearning was replaced by anger at him and shame
at myself,
and finally by absolute disgust at myself and at him for what we had
done.”
“When you came to your senses, as you claim, did you then tell anyone what had
happened to you?”
“At first I was too ashamed, too guilty, and disgusted at myself to tell
anyone. But after a while I told my friend Suzy, a sexual assault victim
herself, but no one else until this year.”
“What? Surely if what you say is true you must have alerted your younger sister
so that she wouldn’t also be victimized.”
“That didn’t occur to me as even a possibility at the time. I thought what he
was doing to me were acts of love for me alone. I wasn’t thinking then in terms
of his being a predator on children. I was thinking only of a unique love
between us. Besides that, for a long time after the sex stopped, although I
always felt the shame and guilt and disgust festering in the back of my mind, I
had forced those emotions out of my daily thoughts. I escaped into my school
work and activities and sports and a beautiful relationship with my boyfriend,
and I blanked it all out.”