As the mayor gave Donna his guarded attention, Donna laid out the background of her case before focusing on her policy and procedure recommendations.
“We’d like for you to get back to us by Friday,” Maureen said.
The mayor listened intently—as did, unbeknownst to anyone in the room, several law enforcement officers who were eavesdropping on the conversation. The feds had bugged the mayor’s office and were also listening to his phone calls. FBI agents were actively investigating Giordano and his office for municipal corruption. Yet that was only half of it. Through the pipeline of that kickback investigation, the feds were about to uncover an unforgivable set of crimes the mayor had been perpetrating, which would bring a new level of hypocrisy, insult, brutality, and inhumanity to that tattered mayor’s chair. While Donna sat across from the mayor of Waterbury, describing her attack in graphic detail, Philip Giordano was embroiled in a sexual assault case of his own, only the mayor was the actual perpetrator and children as young as eight years old his victims. In investigating Giordano on suspicion of corruption, listening to his every move and the phone calls he made, the feds had been introduced to a prostitute the mayor was using to get at two children in her life. The mayor might have been giving favors to area mobsters and taking kickbacks, but those crimes paled in comparison to the fact that he was also continually and repeatedly raping two young girls, eight and ten years old, to whom he was given access by that prostitute, who was mother to one and aunt to another.
The special agent in charge of the Giordano investigation, Michael J. Wolf, later put the mayor’s crimes into perspective, saying, “The public expects and deserves utmost honesty, integrity, and strong moral fiber from those who serve on their behalf,” before adding that the mayor’s conduct was “disgraceful.”
This was the same man Donna Palomba was negotiating with—a rapist himself (of children, no less).
As Donna met with the mayor, the FBI had yet to uncover that Giordano was involved with the prostitute and her daughter and niece. This would become an issue later, when it was first implied that the FBI had allowed some of the abuse to continue so it could build a case against him.
“When we first determined and believed that Mr. Giordano may have been having inappropriate sex,” Agent Wolf told the New York Times, “all of the appropriate agencies were notified and performed admirably, first ensuring the safety of the children and then developing the probable cause to charge him . . .”
The evidence was astonishing when later presented in court during Giordano’s trial, a case handled by none other than John Connelly, the SA in charge of facilitating the investigation into Donna’s sexual assault. Giordano was ultimately charged with six counts each of sexual assault, risk of injury to a minor, and conspiracy to commit sexual assault, all devastating charges that could have put the mayor in prison for life. Giordano came out swinging, calling the prostitute a liar and criminal. But to corroborate her story of supplying her eight-year-old daughter and ten-year-old niece to Giordano for his sexual gratification, the feds provided more than four hours (126 calls total) of taped telephone conversations between Giordano and the prostitute, many of the calls made directly from the mayor’s office. The tapes were incredible in their graphic sexual detail, almost unlistenable.
“Who are you going to be with?” Giordano asked the prostitute during one conversation (made just weeks after he met with Donna and Maureen). It was obvious he had known the prostitute for some time and had engaged in this type of behavior with the children already on several occasions.
The prostitute gave the mayor the nickname for her daughter, the child she and the mayor had decided on earlier, an indication that she was bringing the young girl for the mayor’s sexual pleasure, to which the mayor replied, “Yup,” agreeing that she was the right girl for what he had in mind on that particular day.
But then the mayor, after thinking about it, gave the prostitute a warning: “Make sure! Because if it’s the other one, I’ll leave! ”
Apparently, the younger the better for the mayor of Waterbury.
“I did anything he asked me,” the prostitute later testified in federal court. She admitted how she had first met the mayor when she was a streetwalker working to support a drug habit. He was a client who simply pulled up and asked her if she was available. Stunning the courtroom as she testified, the prostitute said she had actually “lost count of how many times she had taken the girls to the mayor for sex,” adding that his sexual encounters with the children took place inside the mayor’s city-issued car, his government office, his old law office, a friend’s house, and his own home. He paid the prostitute forty to sixty dollars per visit. The child sexual assaults took place generally between 5:15 and 5:30 p.m., which was after Mayor Giordano’s coworkers and staff went home for the night. Sometimes, the woman testified, the mayor would request the children earlier, on school holidays and snow days, when the children were available.
“He wanted young girls . . .” she said.
It was four days after that first taped call when the mayor was heard “berating the prostitute for putting both girls in his car [at the same time] before one of their meetings.”
“It’s awkward for me,” the mayor explained, telling the prostitute how he wanted only one child at a time.
Sometime later the mayor can be heard on a call asking the prostitute, “Who’s coming with you?”
She named the child.
He didn’t approve. The girl she had in mind on that day was, actually, too old.
He said, “I want one of the little girls, I told you.”
So this was the man—a public official, the mayor of the city, a pedophile and rapist—that Donna and Maureen sat down with to negotiate Donna’s case. Donna and Maureen both left the mayor’s office that day, September 18, with little confidence that the mayor would be able to facilitate Donna’s recommendations of policy and procedure changes.
“I don’t know, Maureen,” Donna said. “I have a bad feeling.”
I did not get a good feeling about him from the meeting. You get a gut feeling the first time you meet someone, and I did not sense that he was sincere in his interest to help. He had blown the meeting off a couple of times, and I only met with him out of courtesy to Maureen. I couldn’t believe what I was reading when the story later broke: the mayor had a relationship with a convicted prostitute who was helping him procure young girls for his pleasure? This can’t be happening, I thought. And he would entertain these young girls in his private office? I literally shuddered, my whole body trembling. I sat inside that office with him. Did he have sex with these children in the same office where we met? The thought made me sick, and I wondered what he was thinking when I was describing to him the details of my sexual assault.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
A Breakdown
The mayor’s office did not submit a complete offer on that Friday, September 22, as Maureen and Donna had requested. It wasn’t until the end of the day, 4:09 p.m., when the fax machine in Maureen’s office beeped and the city’s proposal scrolled out the bottom. Nothing like the last minute, Donna and Maureen reflected. Jury selection, after all, was set to begin on September 27, just five days away.
The fax was from Elena Palermo and Cheryl Hricko, corporate counsel for the City of Waterbury. The “Doe v. Moran, et als” concerning “Proposals and Regarding Police Proposals,” as the offer was now being called, appeared rather detailed in its entirety, yet when one looked at the minutiae, it was a bit more pomp and circumstance than the actual change that Donna had been advocating.
The city had proposed what it called “agreeable” terminology to quantify and assess Donna’s recommended policy and procedure changes. The term agreeable, according to the city’s proposal, “is to be interpreted as meaning that such procedure [of which Donna had recommended being initiated] is already in use at the Wate
rbury Police Department, or that we are willing to implement the concepts of the proposals into existing framework of procedures at the police department.”
Whitewash might have been a better way to articulate what was being proposed by the city. Its answer to Donna’s demands was nothing more than a transparent apparition of what Donna wanted, a way for the city to favorably appear as perhaps wanting to make changes. But when one studied the actual language, it was apparent that it was business as usual for the WPD, and nothing was ever going to get done the way Donna believed was essential.
The city’s wording within the offer was extremely vague and mysterious. The way Donna read it, the WPD wanted things both ways. Each policy and procedure Donna wanted implemented (Maureen and Donna had spelled out each demand in a corresponding document, numbering them one through thirteen) was considered “agreeable” in the eyes of the city.
Many of Donna’s notes in the margins of the city’s proposal illustrated her bewilderment: “What’s this mean?” and “How?” and “From where?” Counterproposal number nine, for example, read: “There are contractual provisions that apply to the internal procedures to review an officer’s conduct at the [WPD]. Such contractual provisions and labor issues would not be conducive to implementing this proposal.”
Donna wrote “BS” by what she viewed as an idiotic and confusing statement.
A damn insult.
The city’s counteroffer to Donna’s proposal number twelve, in which she requested that “The victim in this case should be given an acknowledgement that she was telling the truth and an apology,” was this gem: “. . .[I]n other Court case settlements, this would be considered a settlement of a disputed claim wherein the liability would not be admitted.”
Nobody was going to be held accountable? Donna asked herself as she read. The city wanted to wash its hands of this case and not even admit its officers had done anything wrong?
Donna felt insulted and patronized. How dare they? This was unacceptable.
“No way,” Donna told Maureen.
Days later, it wasn’t one of those moves where the mayor wrote a figure down on a piece of paper and slid it silently across the desk for Maureen and Donna to look at, but it might as well have happened that way. They were notified via telephone that the city was working on a monetary offer. At some point Donna would be faced with a decision: Take the cash and walk away. Yet there was nothing in any of the city’s offers and counterproposals that spoke to Donna’s wish to see policies and procedures changed. The changes were a moot point to the city, apparently. The mayor’s office was talking about buying her out, and then walking away unscathed.
The city’s offer was muddled with legalese, and I had no confidence my demands would be met. I felt the city was trying to pull the bureaucratic wool over my eyes; trying to, in other words, get out of this without admitting any culpability whatsoever. This was offensive to me. I had been Jane Doe for seven years; it was time for me to come out and tell my own story and effect change! More and more people in our community began to figure out who I was and began to spread vicious rumors and make judgments about me. This case was slowly encompassing every aspect of my life all over again—it was never-ending. Even the WPD’s secretary, a woman my family had known forever, was being standoffish and cold to John and me. I was becoming overwhelmed by the process of being forced to hide behind this curtain and not speak about it publicly. I wanted the world to hear about the torment I had to endure at the hands of the WPD—and to me, lifting that curtain began with facing off in a court of law against those officers who accused me of lying.
On Monday, September 25, 2000, Maureen Norris called the city’s corporate attorneys’ office handling the case and told them that her client had made a decision.
“She’s going to trial. There will be no more negotiations.”
With that, Donna’s trial, which had been set to begin in days, was postponed to January 2001.
The following month, October, as the leaves burst into the East’s startling fall colors of orange and yellow and red, both good and bad news arrived from Dr. Henry Lee. As part of Donna and Maureen’s preparation for trial, Maureen had asked Lee to testify on Donna’s behalf. Lee’s testimony, they knew, would be invaluable. Lee wrote: “I am willing to supply expert opinion and testimony related to crime scene and forensic issues”; however, “. . . issues relating to police procedures and practices are beyond my area of expertise.” Lee said Maureen was going to have to find “another expert” to comment on those matters.
Lee could certainly testify about something having to do with crime scenes and how officers responded, having once said that the most important part (or moment) of any crime-scene investigation was when the first responders arrived and what they did. The patrol officers who showed up first, Lee had said, could make or break a case.
Weeks before her rescheduled trial, with Christmas approaching, Donna went in for a routine yearly examination with her gynecologist. Routine, Donna should have known by then, was not part of her life anymore.
After the exam Donna’s OB/GYN, sounding cautiously optimistic, said, “Not for nothing, but that lump feels like it has gotten bigger. I don’t think we should leave this alone. We need to do something about it.”
The lump that was supposed to have been nothing to be concerned about had grown since the end of summer. Donna’s doctor encouraged her not to waste any time. “Go in and see your breast doctor.”
Donna went immediately.
“I’ll get you right in to remove the lump and ease your mind,” he explained. “But it is nothing, Donna. I’m telling you.”
“I have a trial coming up. I cannot have any surprises right now, doctor.”
“I understand. Let’s get it out and you’ll see that it’s nothing.”
Hours later Donna went under a local anesthetic, and her doctor removed the lump. After the operation her doctor came back in to see her, reiterating, “I want to reconfirm for you, Donna, this is nothing.” He said he’d send a sample down to the lab for a biopsy to ease her mind and prove that it was a noncancerous growth. “I’ll call you tomorrow. I don’t want you to worry about this.”
Donna couldn’t sleep that night, which should have been an indication that her instincts were speaking to her.
The thought that the lump could be more than a cyst was frightening, and the first thing I did that night as I lay awake was ask God to help me. This was not the first time I had to deal with cancer. In January 1984 I went to the dermatologist for the very first time for a mark on my stomach that had a small halo around it. The young doctor said that it was nothing to be concerned with, but noticed a dark mole on the underside of my upper left arm. He asked how long it had been there, and I told him I didn’t recall, since it was in an area I could not really see. His face turned ashen, and he said I needed to get the mole removed that day and called a nurse in to assist. Within forty-eight hours after testing the mole, I was in for more surgery to excise the area further. It was melanoma.
We did a lot of praying over those scary few days, and we were all incredibly relieved to find that the surrounding tissue was clean and that I didn’t need any further treatment. So there it was: the realization that had the mole not been discovered in time, I may not have lived past my twenties.
When I pray, I always ask for God to help me deal with what’s ahead. I know it is part of His greater plan and not my will but Thy will be done. I did the same when I found the lump while we were in the Outer Banks. I prayed that whatever obstacles lay ahead of me, God would give me the strength to deal with them. If it was His will that it not be cancer, so be it. I also used the opportunity to strengthen my relationship with God. To think about all that He had done for me and my family and how often when things are good I do not thank Him as much as I should. The situation humbled me. This new predicament strengthened my commitment to gi
ve thanks to God always—but maybe more important, prepared me for what was ahead.
Donna’s doctor called the next day. She had been anticipating this news all night long. She didn’t really need to hear him say it. She knew.
“Donna, Donna, Donna, I am so sorry,” he said. “Listen, I want you to come in here so I can look in your eyes and tell you how sorry I am and that it is going to be okay. But you have breast cancer. The tumor came back positive.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
A Battle Begins
Donna Palomba was fighting two cancers at the same time. She’d waited seven years for her day in court against what had become a growing cadre of police officers and civic leaders who had accused her of lying, and now she had a second, internal cancer to fight as well.
If I am going to die from cancer, I want the truth known before I breathe my last. It is my only recourse and hope for redemption—that secondary condition we rely on when our truth has been stripped from us.
Donna’s family grew concerned for her mental and physical well-being. Was she sacrificing her health by moving forward with the suit? Was she taking her cancer diagnosis seriously? Stress was not the best remedy for fighting cancer.
Donna, however, believed that putting the brakes on the legal process now would be even more detrimental to her health, and extremely so to her state of mind. She needed to face down whatever crisis came her way, find a solution to it, or deal with the ramifications of failure. To quit now and begin a full-on battle with cancer would destroy any momentum she had built up in her case, and the lack of resolution would fester inside her.
Jane Doe No More Page 19