Babs’ New Year’s Resolution 102.

© Beverly Taff.

Lola Smith Bab’s adopted trans daughter.
Callista Denton (Callie). Transgendered Duchess of Denton.
Margaret Denton (Maggie). Callie’s wife.
Molly Denton Callie’s grandmother
Ellie Denton Callie’s mother.
Bab’s Barbara Smith. Lola’s adoptive ‘Nana’
Olivia Smith Bab’s adopted daughter. Lesbian black artist
Angela Smith Bab’s adopted daughter Olivia’s lover
Erica Powers Bab’s foster daughter.
Sergeant Bridie Davies Lady Police detective protecting the girls.
Sergeant Brian Davies. Bridie’s twin brother.
Inspector John, Heading up the anti-rape-gang operation.
Gareth Jenkins, Police office trained in firearms and protection.
Belinda Harrington Lola’s university girlfriend.
Aaron Talbot Surgical registrar – married to –
Shirley Talbot Lecturer at Local university.
Mickey Talbot Aaron and Shirley’s oldest son.
Jessica Talbot Aaron & Shirley’s middle daughter.
Bianca Talbot Aaron & Shirley’s youngest daughter.
Henry Denton Callie’s only son.
Charlotte Denton Callie’s only daughter.
Beverly Callie’s maternal great aunt (Ellie’s paternal aunt)
Wendy Smith Beverly’s Operations Manager for Hull
Louisa Wendy’s Daughter
Griselda & Mia Wendy’s younger twin daughters.
Susan Harvey Prosecution counsel advocating for Erica.
Han’s The policeman’s son Erica fancies
Uncle Phillip CIA Agent.
Emily Jackson. Texan girl Kidnapped to Holland & Turkey
Sandra Jackson Sister to Emily kidnapped in Texas as a hostage.
Eddie Emily’s Tandem surfing partner.
Chapter 102.

The judge turned to Erica as she rested her hands on the front rail of the witness box, partly to show that she was not trembling and ready in all respects to engage with the defence council.

The large video screen flickered into life and Erica turned to watch it just as the jury did. The judge had her own repeater at the end of her bench and she swivelled around. So that she could watch the screen and Erica simultaneously.

The screen was divided into several smaller screens showing video footage from various officer’s bodycams.

The first images were of the police demanding to be let in before battering down the door. Quickly, the door burst inwards and after some momentary confused images, the Godfather, a well-known Guatemalan politician, was caught hurriedly wrapping the bed sheet around his naked body. Erica had curled up into a ball as though preparing for a beating.

The man was cursing the intruders in Spanish but when he realised the intruders were police, he lurched back to the bed as though to reach under the pillow. He realised that his gun was not under the pillow but tucked under Erica’s tightly balled body, so he hit Erica violently on the head and started to try and rip the gun from her terrified grip.

It was only then that one of the officers realised that the girl was trying to deny the Godfather access to the gun that the officer flung himself on the bed and grabbed at the Godfather’s wrist. Erica screamed as she finally realised that help may be at hand.

“He’s trying to get the gun! Oowow, my bloody wrist! Stop him someone!”

In the three-way struggle to recover the gun and subdue the man, then the gun went off in Erica’s hand and the bullet smashed into the bedroom wall. It was a no nonsense forty-four magnum and the bang was deafening. The sheer noise momentarily stunned everybody in the room.

The Godfather still refused to be beaten and he almost broke Erica’s wrist as he started to bend it back to prise the gun from her grasp. Fortunately, a second officer had the presence of mind to whip out his telescopic truncheon and smash it down hard on the Godfather’s arm. This partially paralysed the Godfather who continued trying to rip the gun from Erica’s grip. Eric’s scream of agony drowned out the second police-officer’s curse but the truncheon came down a second time even harder on the Godfather’s now exposed wrist.

There was a distinct crack of bone followed by a ferocious curse but he released his grip on Erica and she squealed with relief as the struggle toppled her and the gun out of the bed and onto the floor. The two police still had their hands full so Erica kicked the gun under the bed then crouched low to try and hide her nudity.

Then she realised she was very vulnerable if the Godfather managed to escape the police. He was a powerful man and a brutal one, as Erica had learned during the sex.

She stood up, prepared to run but the scuffling men were blocking the doorway and for fully thirty seconds, she was standing stark naked getting ready to make a dash. Finally, she heard a woman’s voice talking to the police, then a woman police officer entered and promptly gasped at the naked Erica. She stepped out of the bedroom again and quickly returned with a large bath towel from bathroom and covered Erica as she led her past the struggling police onto the landing.

She hurried Erica out of the room just as a third officer hurried in to complete the arrest of the Godfather. The WPC (woman Police Officer,) paused to check that Erica wasn’t wounded then called down to her colleagues to find a dressing gown.

“My clothes are on the floor beside the bed.” Erica declared.

“Sorry love, they’ll be needed as evidence. Where’s the gun?”

“Under the bed. I kicked it there as I fell out of the bed.”

“Good!” She called to one of the arresting officers for by now the Godfather was cuffed.

“The young lady says the gun’s under the bed!”

Erica paused uncertainly as she realised she had just been called a young lady.

“Young lady?! Not bitch, or whore or tart?”

“We know the score missy. You’re a victim not a criminal.”

“Ain’t that the truth!” Erica sighed as she slumped against the bathroom wall.”

ooo000ooo

Eventually the WPC returned with a dressing gown and Erica was putting it on when the Godfather emerged from the bedroom in Handcuffs while securely held by the policemen.

“Thanks guys.” Erica ventured, not really certain what the police thought about her.

The godfather spat in her face as he struggled past but only received another crack across his skull for his pains.

“Betty will help you clean up love and she’ll take your statement.”

“Thanks,” Erica called down the hall as the three officers manhandled the Godfather somewhat carelessly and forcefully.

Moments later the WPC Returned with a dressing gown plus a forensics team and they promptly sealed off the bed room.

“Under the bed you said?" The forensics officer asked.

“Yeah.” Erica answered for the WPC. “I kicked it there.”

“Got it.” He emerged triumphant and promptly took prints off the gun before sealing it in a bag.

“Can I swab you for DNA Please?”

Erica was more than willing and even offered to let him take a sample of sperm from her body.

“Thanks love but the doctor has to do that, he will also want photographs of your bruising. Your neck looks really nasty.”

At this point an ambulance siren interrupted the narrative and the several video images were progressively switched off as Varying officers turned off their body cams.

However the video recording did not end there, the policewoman was instructed to accompany Erica to the hospital and as Erica sat on the stretcher the medic and the policewoman talked as first responder checks were made. At this point the video in the ambulance was activated. The higher quality cameras clearly showed the bruising to Erica’s chest arms and shoulders.

Finally, the judge stopped the video and nodded to the defence attorney.

“We don't need to see your private parts Miss Powers. You may proceed with questioning counsel.”

The first thing the defence counsel did was to make a great play of Erica’s dysfunctional childhood, mainly by dwelling upon her juvenile crime record.

“So, when did you first come to the attention of the police.”

Erica shrugged and made a play of not caring at first.

“Dunno exactly, I was about six I think. Not long after my first foster home.”

“You can’t remember.”

“Not exactly. The police or social would have my record.”

“Yes. I have a copy here. You were five years and ten months. It was before your sixth birthday.”

“Your maths is good.” Erica replied.

“But yours is not apparently, if you cannot remember your sixth birthday.”

“I don’t recall having a sixth birthday, I was returned to the care home after being caught and they don’t much do birthdays there.”

“Apparently you continued your crime spree while you were at the home. Stealing from shops and even the other children in the home.”

“All the kids stole, there were no locks on the doors.”

“So you became a habitual thief.”

“We had to, to survive. If we scored we shared.”

“Scored? As in drugs and stuff?”

“Nah, mostly sweets, make-up, clothes and stuff. The drugs came later.”

“You sound as though you’re proud of it.”

“No. I’m just telling it as it was.”

“So when did you start taking drugs?”

“Dunno exactly. I think it was about the fourth foster home so I’d have been about twelve .”

“You were addicted that early. So you were a thief and an addict by twelve.”

“I wasn’t an addict. I enjoyed a blow occasionally but I could take it or leave it.”

“How did you pay for the drugs?”

“Stealing at first, then occasionally sleeping with my boyfriend.”

“At twelve!”

Erica nodded and the defence counsel pounced.

“So you were already a prostitute at twelve!”

“Erica nodded again then added.”

“I was doin’ it for me not for anybody else. I did’n have no pimp.”

“So you were actively prostituting yourself from the age of twelve!”

“I’ve already said that.”

“How old were the men you were going with?”

“It wasn’t men, it was the boys in the home and at school.”

“At school!”

“Where else? I wasn’t meeting older men, - then.”

“So you were obviously aware of the dangers but you persisted in prostitution.”

“You’re going around in circles.” Erica argued.

“No quite,” the defence council countered, “I’m drilling down. When did you first start meeting older men, mature men?”

“When the local neighbourhood gang started getting interested. The pimps.”

“Quite. The pimps as you say. How old where they?”

“Mostly eighteen to twenty.”

“Did you have a regular pimp?”

“No. I managed to avoid that at first. Mostly they were sort of boyfriends then they asked me to sleep with their mates.”

“But it was all voluntary, you were willing.”

“Kind of.”

“You either were or you weren’t.”

“It varied. Sometime I refused if I didn’t like him or he smelled.”

“Did you meet them at parties?”

“Yes usually.”

“So you were leading a dangerous, vulnerable lifestyle, you were virtually inviting disaster.”

“I wasn’t asking to be raped, I was asking men to pay me for sex.”

“But you were being raped, statutory rape.”

“I suppose so. The legal stuff didn’t concern me.”

“So you weren’t concerned with law.”

“The law wasn’t concerned about me. It was mutual.”

“So you were out of control, almost outside the law.”

“Outside the law; yes, but not out of control. I was managing my money safely until the pimps moved in. When they zonked me out on the night of my kidnap, they took control, by force.”

“They stole your money.”

“No that was safe. They stole my liberty.”

“Do you still have the proceeds of those crimes?”

“Yes, and I wasn’t committing a crime, I was underage.”

“You do know that paying for sexual services of a person under eighteen is a crime.”

“Yeah. For the buyer, not the seller.” Prostitution isn’t a crime in Britain, pimping and stuff is.”

The defence counsel was conscious she was not making much headway. Erica’s blatant exploitation of the law and her openness gave her little to latch on to because whichever way she tried to play it, the fact remained that Erica had been, kidnapped, abused and trafficked.

To speak of moral vacuums and child criminality was a losing battle. The social gulf between Erica the illegitimate, street urchin and the unctuous self-righteousness of the Texan jurors was too big a gulf to bridge. The jurors just sat with mouths agape at Erica’s open admittal about her previous juvenile waywardness.

The defence counsel knew from long experience that those jurors who could reach across the societal and culture gaps were the ones who would argue most effectively in the jury room when it came to deciding verdicts. Knowing this, she quickly moved to wrap up her interrogation for she knew there were six more victims with similar evidence to lay before the court. The prosecution evidence was overwhelming and she knew it was a losing battle.

The attempts to try and prove that Erica had been voluntarily sleeping with the Godfather on the afternoon of the police raid were also disproved when the forensic evidence of the bruising and scratches around her vagina were revealed in the photographs. The fact that the Godfather also had a gun under the pillow did not serve his case very well.

The court finished late because the judge decided it was better to get Erica’s evidence wrapped up and prevent any further distress. It was dark by the time the convoy left the courthouse and the police escorts were a little jumpy.

That night however, the mood around the hotel table was much happier. The other girls; Mexican and Texan alike, were from ‘respectable’ backgrounds and theirs would be a less stressful ordeal without all the moral hypocrisy.

The next hurdle was Olivia and Angela’s case, but Erica’s case alone had pretty much broken the back of the defence’s immoral, juvenile lifestyle defence. Certainly, the issues could not get lower on any barometer of morality.

ooo000ooo