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Subject: Mother Defends Reputation Of Alleged Sex Assault Victim;Accusations of
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 92 04:45:04 EST
Message-ID: <37.1992Nov25.044505@AmeriCast.com>
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Mother Defends Reputation Of Alleged Sex Assault
Victim;Accusations of Promiscuity Aired in New Jersey Trial<By
Laurie Goodstein<Washington Post Staff Writer<

NEWARK, Nov. 24 - The mother of a retarded young woman who
prosecutors say was sexually assaulted by a group of high school
football players completed a fourth tense day on the witness
stand today, firmly resisting defense attorneys' suggestions that
her daughter had a reputation for being sexually aggressive and
adventurous.

But she broke out in sobs when asked to explain why she had not
believed initial reports from teachers about what happened to her
daughter that afternoon in the basement.

"Who would believe that anyone would do this to anyone?" the
mother asked tearfully. Later, she said, "We live in a small town
where people know each other, and the people involved have known
each other for years. To me, it was just unbelievable."<

The daughter, now 21, has an IQ of 64 and the mental capacity of
an 8-year-old. She was 17 on March 1, 1989, when 13 teenagers she
had known for years in her suburban Glen Ridge neighborhood al-
legedly lured her into a basement and sexually assaulted her with
a broom handle, a bat and a stick. She is expected to testify
next week.

Attorneys for the four young men on trial for sexual assault have
insinuated in a barrage of questions that the alleged victim was
so promiscuous that she willingly participated in the basement
episode.

The mother must have been aware, the attorneys insisted, that her
daughter had exposed her breasts in class, propositioned high
school athletes sitting at a lunch table and regularly used slang
terms for masturbation and ejaculation.

"She's extremely vulnerable because she does not know how to say
no," the woman said, "and she does not know how to act when she
is with people in certain social situations."

Earlier testimony from the young woman's sister, teachers,
friends and a former coach painted a portrait of a passive, com-
pliant and vulnerable person with the emotional maturity of a
child.

From an early age, the young woman endured teasing and torment
from neighborhood children, her older sister testified. Once, she
was tricked into eating mud pies by neighborhood boys who told
her that it was a chocolate bar. Another time, the sister said,
the girl came home with red welts on her arm and said that her
friends were pinching her but that she had not told them to stop.

At age 5 or 6, the girl's playmates convinced her to eat dog
feces, her sister testified. The sister described finding the
girl surrounded by other children "with a pen in her hand, and
the dog feces were on the pen. She had a look of disgust on her
face."

Among the group that day, the sister testified, were two of the
defendants, fraternal twins Kyle and Kevin Scherzer, now 21.
Prosecutors must prove that the defendants knew that the young
woman was "mentally defective," and the sister's testimony bol-
stered their argument.

Christopher Archer, another defendant, teased the girl during
tennis lessons with taunts of "stupid" and "retarded" until she
cried, testified Andrew Provost, who ran a tennis program in Glen
Ridge from 1982 to 1984.

Jeanette DePalma taught the girl in a class for the educably men-
tally retarded for three years after the alleged sexual assault.
DePalma described her as "easily led" and manipulated by "people
that she wanted to like her."

She had "very poor self-esteem" and frequently noted that her
classmates were doing better than her, the teacher said.

But the defense has tried to paint a picture of a sexually ex-
perienced young woman who once told a state psychiatrist that she
was involved in "some form of sex almost every day."

Defense attorney Alan Zegas pressed the girl's mother to say her
daughter was pulled out of Columbia High School suddenly because
of sexually explicit behavior, including lifting her shirt in
class.

The young woman "posed a danger to some of the other students at
her school because of her inappropriate behavior," Zegas said to
the mother. "Is that not so?"

In a firm voice, the woman insisted that her daughter changed
schools because teachers told her that her daughter had been
threatened by a male classmate and was "a potential rape vi-
citm."<

The mother said she asked a gynecologist to prescribe birth-
control pills because of her daughter's "vulnerability." But de-
fense attorneys repeatedly questioned whether the parents were
concerned that their daughter might become pregnant because of
her promiscuity.

The jury of 10 women and six men, including four alternates,
often appeared exasperated as the four defense attorneys hammered
at the mother's credibility with repetitious questions.

The trial, in its seventh week, has brought to the courtroom fam-
ily and friends of the defendants and the alleged victim, pitting
long-time Glen Ridge residents against their neighbors.<02:28
11-25C9999-----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

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