• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 729 0

not bother to cross-examine her because he thought her worthless. He explained that the jury would think so too, when they saw that he would not dignify her by asking a single question. He had had a floor plan of the school blown up to fit an easel so that the office spaces were visible. With his pointer he took Mr. Henskin through the various hallways and offices asking as he went: Did Henskin often leave his own door open to encourage students and teachers to seek him out? Did the secretary leave her door open? He rarely had to use the intercom, she was so close? His schedule was varied and unpredictable, wasn’t it? Did he have to leave his office to solve a problem in another part of the school? Several times a day? And when he so frequently left his office he walked right past, or even through the nurse’s office?

Rafferty had told me that the jurors would ask themselves how in the hell the abuse had taken place with Henskin in and out a dozen times a day. After Paul had gotten his point across, he said, “There has been a great deal of publicity about sexual abuse in the last decade. Have you ever been concerned, yourself, about being accused of sexual molestation?”

“It’s something that crosses your mind, as an educator. I think anyone who works in this climate with children is aware of what care must be taken.”

“What climate are you speaking of?”

“People are sensitive to the issue of child abuse.”

“It is a climate where anyone on your staff could be charged with abuse?”

“We have an excellent staff at our school, overall.”

“I agree your staff has always been excellent, but my question to you, sir, is given the climate, as you say, a sex-abuse charge is a real fact of life for any of the district’s employees and yourself included.”

“Any person who works with children has to be exemplary.”

“Because of the hysterical climate—”

“Objection,” Susan Dirks shouted.

Rafferty rephrased the question. “Would you say, Mr. Henskin, that an employee at your school has to be beyond reproach, because there is a heightened awareness about sexual abuse?”

“Yes, I’d say so.”

“And a fear about sexual abuse?”

“There is new, general knowledge that child abuse is pervasive in our culture.”

“Would you say that many parents are afraid for their children?”

“I couldn’t say specifically, but I suppose that’s true.”

I scanned the jury, trying to see if they were getting the idea, that they, too, could be accused. The Greek God had been wearing Hawaiian shirts all week, in spite of the fact that it was December. I dressed in particular for him every morning, wondering if he would think better of me if I was wearing the pink sweater or the blue cotton shirt. In addition to the blond beehive ladies there were two other older women who had become individuals as the week wore on: Grace and Bette, I called them, the type of women who went home to put on their aprons and knit by the television. They were both plush and grizzled, unpretentious, surely satisfied by their lot. I imagined the big crystal jars on their end tables filled with hard candy, homemade afghans draped over their chairs and sofas, a cherished little dog. I thought of them in the evenings, both of them widows, home alone, heating up supper, thinking as they waited for their food, of me. They would both be overwhelmed and saddened by the case. They wouldn’t know what to think. They would sit at the table over their beef stew, thinking not of the words of the experts or any of the witnesses, but of me, and the single question: Did she do it? Could that girl with the handsome husband in the back have done it?

On Thursday Susan Dirks called Dr. Eugene Bailey, a psychologist from the University of Wisconsin. He was a frail-looking man with small round glasses, thinning red hair, and a cyst on the bald part of his head. Rafferty had never seen him in court before. He had told me at the break that he nearly felt sorry for the professor. “The guys Dirks usually haul in must be out of town. I can’t imagine how she dragged this poor mole away from his books, unless he’s a relation,