The Making of Christina

by Meredith Jaffe

  Fifteen minutes into the morning session, the wooden doors sprung open and in ones and twos, the media straggled out.

  Anne shifted in her seat. ‘Looks like we’re on.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Ah-ha. If the media are coming out, Bianca must be about to take the stand.’

  Christina tried to see inside the court but the doors closed as swiftly as they had opened. She scratched the back of her knee, reliving the anxiety she had felt when Bianca announced she intended to give her evidence in person.

  ‘Don’t do it,’ Christina had begged.

  ‘I have to, Mum.’ Bianca had been calm and determined.

  ‘Make her do it on CCTV,’ Christina had pleaded with Katie Sommers.

  ‘I wouldn’t recommend this if Bianca wasn’t over sixteen. You have to understand, it’s about more than Bianca’s word against the accused. There will be twelve jurors in there, ordinary men and women, each with their own set of biases and stereotypes. You’d be amazed how many people will believe she wanted a sexual relationship with her stepfather.’

  Christina had flinched. She’d heard this before. How jurors, even judges and lawyers, questioned why a child kept their abuse secret for so long, could remain living under the same roof as the person who hurt them and not say a word. Jocelyn called it child abuse accommodation syndrome. A fancy title to explain how children coped with the years of emotional and physical terror at the hands of someone they were supposed to be able to trust.

  ‘Taking the stand will go a long way to making Bianca’s version the right version,’ Katie Sommers had said.

  ‘And if she falls to pieces?’

  The prosecutor hadn’t even blinked. ‘We’ll probably lose the case.’

  Bianca had stood up, tall and defiant. ‘I’m not hiding from him. I want him to look me in the eye and say I’m lying.’

  Christina had reeled from Bianca’s cold confidence. She’d been warned Bianca might fall apart after her confession and to watch out for signs of post-traumatic stress disorder so common in victims of sexual assault. But telling her story seemed to have had the opposite effect on Bianca. After the initial shock of the first few days, Bianca had become calm, focused. Somehow, through genes or circumstance, Bianca had developed a tough inner core.

  Now the moment had arrived where the gamble must be played out. Behind these doors Bianca sat in the witness box, metres away from Jackson, flanked by the jury on one side, the judge on the other and the teams of lawyers forging the front line. All bar Bianca were seasoned players who knew the rules of engagement and where advantage could be found. Her word against his.

  Christina closed her eyes. It might as well be Bianca on trial. And locked outside the courtroom, there was nothing she could do to help.

  ‘What do you think’s going on in there?’ Jamie flicked his head in the direction of the court.

  She expected Anne to answer him, but when she remained silent Christina said, ‘First they play the tapes of Bianca’s interviews with the police and then Katie Sommers will ask some follow-up questions.’

  ‘Sounds straightforward.’

  At lunchtime the doors swung open. Christina rushed over but the court was just a bland space of pale pine and grey carpet. The room was empty, Bianca had disappeared.

  ‘You must eat,’ Rosa commanded at her side. Anne told her to go, so she followed her mother downstairs.

  She returned an hour later, the sandwich a doughy lump in her stomach. When Anne joined her, she smelled salmon and raw onion on the detective’s breath.

  ‘Katie Sommers says Bianca did well,’ Anne said.

  ‘Oh good,’ relieved as if Bianca had answered every question right in an exam.

  ‘The real test will be how she stands up to David Kent’s cross-examination.’

  An officer for the DPP had run Bianca through every scenario and dirty tactic he knew. But practising in an office high above the city was no preparation for taking the witness stand and having every word scrutinised and dissected. David Kent had no interest in who was telling the truth. His job was to secure Jackson’s freedom. From the little she had seen of him, Christina did not believe David Kent was a man of much mercy.

  Christina strained to hear a hint of what was happening on the other side of the thick timber doors. She eavesdropped on the smattered dialogue of the journalists for clues as to David Kent’s plan of attack. Formed and rejected lines of questioning to weasel information out of Anne Rushmore post lunch with Katie Sommers. She looked at the crossword on her lap. She had been colouring in the squares, undoing a morning’s work.

  The doors flung open and several journalists rushed over, eager for snippets.

  ‘They’ve played the tape again,’ Anne said without looking up from her novel.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘David Kent does this all the time.’

  ‘Does what?’

  ‘Plays the tape again and again, supposedly so the jury have a full understanding of the police interview.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘He’s using aversion therapy. Play it often enough and the jury get over their shock and distress at hearing the details of the abuse and become bored and distracted.’

  ‘And that’s fair?’

  Anne shrugged. ‘It’s legal.’

  The following day David Kent played the tape twice more. By Christina’s calculation, the jury had been listening to Bianca for twelve hours. A whole room of strangers privy to a young girl’s distress as she recounted events that were humiliating, embarrassing and revolting to her. Jackson had listened too, whilst Bianca sat metres away. And in some surreal play, Bianca watched everyone listening to her.

  At day’s end, Christina stood at the elevators. The arrows lit up, people brushed past her on their way out of the building and into the real world. She willed the metal doors to open and deliver Bianca. When at last they did, Jocelyn had her arm threaded through Bianca’s and mouthed the words, ‘Rough day,’ at Christina.

  Jamie barrelled over and hugged Bianca. ‘Gumdrop. How are you, little mate?’

  ‘I’ve seen that stupid tape so many times. I can’t believe he made me watch it again,’ Bianca burst out.

  Christina hesitated before saying, ‘That must have been upsetting,’ an understatement if ever there was one but all words were woefully inadequate.

  Bianca shook her head, irritated by the misunderstanding. ‘No! I mean, apart from the fact I look terrible and my eyes are all swollen from crying and stuff. I can’t believe I was sixteen. I looked so much younger then.’

  Christina had no answer to such a response. As if they were talking about photos from Bianca’s Year 10 formal.

  ‘I mean, what’s the point of showing it to the jury a gazillion times? All it proves is what a sicko he was doing all those things to me. I can’t see how it helps him win the case.’ She switched on her mobile and logged into the outside world.

  Jamie nodded in a show of solidarity.

  Christina trod with caution. ‘Maybe the barrister kept you on the stand to rattle you.’

  Bianca scrolled through her messages, not bothering to look up. ‘Yeah well it worked.’

  ‘If it’s too much . . .’

  Bianca spoke as she texted, ‘I’m not doing this on CCTV in some remote location where I have no control over what’s going on. I have to be in that room.’

  Christina surrendered. ‘Okay, okay.’ She sighed, ‘But tomorrow, when the barrister starts his cross-examination, he’s going to try to wrong-foot you.’

  ‘I know, Mum. Katie’s told me, Jocelyn’s told me. I know to expect the worst.’

  As the courtroom doors locked, Christina feared David Kent would start day four with another run of the tape, but word came out that the barrister had begun his cross-examination. Christina’s first reaction was relief
until she saw the pinched furious face of Katie Sommers rush past her at the morning break. Anne Rushmore registered it, sighed and returned to Caribbean Romance.

  At lunchtime Jackson emerged with a satisfied expression and a relaxed legal team. Christina squeezed her eyes shut. Whatever was happening in the courtroom was not going Bianca’s way. When the afternoon session commenced she found out why.

  ‘Kent’s making Bianca go over each of the incidents on the tape.’

  She didn’t understand what Anne Rushmore meant.

  ‘He’s questioning every nuance of her behaviour: gestures, tone of voice.’

  ‘What the hell for?’ Jamie attacked the detective. Without thinking, Christina laid a hand on his arm. Jamie shook her off.

  ‘Little by little, Kent is chipping away at her, hoping she’ll contradict herself or inadvertently blurt out information he can use against her. He needs something he can use to get Jackson off.’

  ‘And the judge lets him do that?’ Jamie said.

  ‘As long as the defence stays within the accepted boundaries of the law, most judges allow quite a rigorous cross-examination of the witness.’

  ‘She’s only a child. How can that be fair?’ said Christina.

  Anne Rushmore gazed at her with those impenetrable eyes and said, ‘I never said it was fair. And she chose to be there.’

  And she would not have been there at all were it not for Christina. It was her fault. Charged with giving her child safe passage to adulthood, she had failed. These thoughts crushed the air out of her. Christina’s failures as a parent, her neglect, would burden Bianca for life; this was not a sore tooth that could be removed and then the pain would be gone. What was happening in the courtroom would become part of who Bianca was. Christina had made it so.

  The afternoon passed in slow seconds. At one point the door opened and Christina swore she heard Bianca cry out, ‘No!’ She ran to the toilets to hide her tears.

  The following day David Kent ratcheted up his attack. Again he made Bianca go through each and every incident in excruciating detail – not once but twice. In the lunch break Christina rang Bianca’s mobile, desperate to speak to her, but it was switched off. She tried Jocelyn’s with the same result.

  The situation deteriorated as the afternoon wore on. The breaks came every twenty minutes. Each time the doors opened, she heard Bianca sobbing.

  ‘He’s pulling her to pieces.’ Impotence and outrage boiled inside her.

  ‘You have to understand this is a deliberate ploy,’ Anne soothed.

  Jamie snorted.

  Anne ignored him. It was Christina she spoke to. ‘He’s pressuring her to crack. If she refuses to continue, the trial will be aborted. It’s as good as a not guilty verdict.’

  ‘No, no, no. He can’t do that to her. She’s waited nine months for this.’ The words spilled from Christina’s mouth.

  Rosa raised her head and frowned. ‘She won’t crack.’

  ‘How do you know, Mama?’ Christina could not keep the hope from rising.

  ‘You don’t set out to climb a mountain and decide halfway you’ve changed your mind,’ Massimo said, smiling at his wife.

  Rosa patted his hand, nodding. ‘Si. Have faith in her, Tina. You can give her that.’

  Faith, a strange word from her godless mother. Saving Bianca would take a much bigger miracle. Christina pointed towards the courtroom. ‘David Kent knows Jackson is guilty. He doesn’t care if he humiliates and degrades Bianca as long as he gets his client off. That is not justice.’

  Anne Rushmore closed her book. ‘This is about the law, Christina. If you get justice as well, then that’s the icing on the cake.’

  Christina searched Anne’s face. She couldn’t tell whether cynicism or resignation was behind that comment. ‘So what’s the point?’

  ‘Jackson’s right to a fair trial is at the very heart of our legal system.’

  ‘And what about Bianca’s rights? What’s the law’s view on that?’

  Anne looked over Christina’s shoulder. ‘Looks like we’ve finished for the day.’

  Bianca crossed the almost empty foyer, angrily smacking gum. ‘He kept telling me I was lying,’ she said, digging in her handbag for her phone. ‘He tried to make out I’m some sort of skank.’ Her voice rose. ‘Like I was somehow responsible for what Jackson did to me.’

  Christina boxed her own anger away for later. Faith, her mother said; how was faith going to fix this? ‘Sweetheart, you know he is being paid to paint you in a bad light.’

  Bianca tipped her handbag upside down, scattering the contents over the carpet. She swooped on her phone. ‘But I’m telling the truth.’

  Christina knelt beside her, handing her a lip gloss and a floral tampon packet. ‘I know you are, sweetheart. We all do.’

  This close, she could see the swell of Bianca’s lips where her teeth had broken the skin. How Christina wished that right now she could fold her daughter in her arms and absorb all this anger and pain.

  Bianca finished shoving her belongings back into her handbag. She looked up at Christina, her eyes brimming with hot tears. ‘Why don’t they believe me, Mum?’

  Have faith. ‘We believe you, sweetheart.’

  Bianca sagged on her haunches. ‘He’s not going to do this again tomorrow, is he?’

  Christina held out her hand and helped Bianca to her feet. She kept hold of her, Bianca’s cool fingers cocooned in hers. ‘I’m sure the worst of it’s over, sweetheart. Tomorrow you’ll be finished on the stand.’ Knowing as the words leave her lips that it may be nothing more than wishful thinking.

  But David Kent was far from finished. He began the day by making Bianca go over her testimony for a third time. Christina only found out later the details of what happened next. All she knew at the time was that a break was called and a staff member rushed into the court carrying a bucket and cloth. Bianca had vomited in the witness box.

  She demanded Anne Rushmore take her to Bianca but that was not permitted. Christina hated the way her role had been reduced, shrunk like wool in a hot wash. She felt useless, even her role as a witness was not central to the case. She was peripheral to parenthood. She remembered an officer of the court saying, ‘You don’t own your children, you just look after them.’ Never had the truth of this statement been so clear.

  Bianca had already been on the stand a total of twenty hours. It was her fifth day, her fifth day of thinking on her feet, trying to make sure she stayed faithful to her testimony, alert to the underhand tactics of the defence that sought to prove her evidence was fatally flawed and thus secure Jackson’s freedom. Five days of hypervigilance, five days of being called a liar, a fabricator, Lolita-like in her desire to entrap an innocent older man. Bianca, a seventeen-year-old child, abused by an adversarial legal system that allowed the bullying of children. It was not enough that she had been raped and emotionally abused in her own home for six years. Now that Bianca was seeking justice, the law was designed to doubt and deride her every word.

  ‘Someone has to make this stop,’ Christina begged.

  Anne Rushmore shook her head. ‘It’s up to the judge.’

  ‘Then why isn’t he doing anything? I thought the defence was not allowed to harass her.’

  Anne returned to her book.

  Christina counted six more breaks. At the last an officer of the court asked if she by any chance had brought spare clothes for Bianca. Bewildered, she said no.

  Rosa reached into her bag and brought out a thick roll of notes. ‘Go buy her something, Tina.’

  Christina ran through the city streets, dodging and weaving the three blocks from Liverpool to Pitt Street, unaware that David Kent had finished with Bianca. As she burst through the doors of David Jones and tried to remember what floor women’s wear was on, Katie Sommers was introducing the contents of Jackson’s desk into evidence. The images the
police had found were being played on a large screen and they were enough to show that David Kent’s cavalier treatment of Bianca, in front of judge and jury, had been a tactical error.

  Christina returned to the court to find Anne Rushmore pacing outside with her mobile phone pinned to her ear. ‘How do I get these to Bianca?’ Christina interrupted her. The detective put a finger to her lips, saying to the person on the other end, ‘Yes, the judge has just ordered it.’

  She smiled at Christina, a big confident smile. Christina turned and realised that no one else was here. Her mother and father, Jamie, Della were not in their seats. She frowned at the detective. Anne Rushmore finished her call with, ‘He’s called recess until tomorrow morning at ten.’

  It wasn’t the end of the court case, although it was certainly and unmistakably the turning point. Christina had known none of this at the time. As a corroborating witness, she could not be told what had gone on behind closed doors that day. She gave her own testimony in a later session and failed to recall a single word she said once she left the stand. How had Bianca withstood the onslaught for days? But she would never forget the pictures.

  She knew the forensic IT team had gone through the contents of all the computers and broken into the secret drawer in Jackson’s desk. There were photographs of young children in his apartment in Hanoi. Videos and other images of child pornography, though thank goodness, none of Bianca. What had happened to her was bad enough without thinking about her image being shared across the globe by thousands of men like Jackson.

  David Kent tried to recover by claiming Bianca could not have been sexually assaulted as she exhibited no clear symptoms classic to child sexual assault victims, namely PTSD. But in Justice Grainger’s closing directions he said, ‘Just as soldiers in the theatre of war who experience death, torture, fear and deprivation do not all go on to develop post-traumatic stress disorder as a consequence, it is also true that not all child sexual abuse victims exhibit “appropriate” signs of abuse. There is no gold standard of psychological symptoms specific to sexual abuse. There is no one set of symptoms or behaviours displayed by all sexually abused children. Depending upon the individual child, and their age and circumstances, some exhibit a high number of symptoms whereas others exhibit none at all.’