Tears didn’t help.
Night after night, Mom would lead the girl into her parents’ bedroom, cover her eyes with a washcloth and lift up her gown. Then, Dad would put his “wrong place” in her “wrong place.”
And every time he did, she would cry. Dad would tell her to stop crying, but she said she couldn’t.
Peering over the top of the witness stand, the 10-year-old girl told jurors Wednesday about her ordeal as the trial of her mother, a 40- year-old woman charged with 24 counts, including sexual assault and aggravated incest, continued. Her daughter said it all began when she was about 7.
“She never didn’t want me to do it,” she told the Denver District Court jury. “She was the one helping my dad.”
Afterward, her mother took her into the bathroom, gave her a bath and hugged and kissed her.
The daughter, now living with foster parents, testified while her mother watched a live video feed from the courtroom in the chambers of Presiding Judge Herbert Stern.
Charges against the mother also cover alleged assaults of the girl’s half-brother, now 18. Prosecutors say he was first abused when he was 5. In that case, prosecutors say, the woman dressed her son as a schoolgirl, painted his face with makeup and then took him to his stepfather.
The woman’s husband, 59, has pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual assault on a child and faces up to life in prison. The Denver Post is withholding the parents’ names to protect the children’s identities.
The girl testified Wednesday that on three occasions her parents asked her to perform oral sex on her dad, and the mother demonstrated how it was done. Each time, she refused, running back to her bedroom and pulling the sheets over her head.
“She (the mother) told me I was being a bad girl because I wouldn’t do what they wanted me to,” the child testified.
Her dad told her it was something she should do because that was what their family did.
She testified that once after she refused, her dad took his anger out on her and her mother, hitting her on the knees with a belt and whacking her mom across the head with the belt.
Although her mother was a willing participant most of the time, the child said, her mother sometimes refused to get her, provoking a violent reaction from her father, who would beat her mother for refusing.
She also said her father shot her mom with a BB gun and threw an iron into her head. She described how her mother always had black eyes and injured knees – which her mother would say were from falling down or running into doors or walls.
Defense lawyer Chuck Leidner has portrayed his client, who is disabled and walks with a cane, as the victim of severe domestic violence. She was told by her husband that he would kill the children, slice them into little pieces and freeze the remains if she didn’t do what he said, Leidner said.
Leidner plans to call a series of mental-health and domestic-violence experts to testify that the woman is severely psychologically damaged.
Staff writer Howard Pankratz can be reached at 303-820-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com.
