A veteran criminal defense investigator reflects on why she’s willing to represent clients who’ve been charged with harming a child.
My client Juan had been sitting in jail for more than two years, awaiting his day in court. He was charged with molesting his 11-year-old soon-to-be stepdaughter. He avowed his innocence. But, as I always do when investigating allegations of abuse or sexual misconduct against a child, I started this investigation with the assumption that the accuser’s statement was true. If the facts later change my mind, I know they will change the jury’s mind.
These cases can be daunting. Early in my career, I wouldn’t touch them. It took many years of working as a criminal defense investigator — and many sleepless nights — to settle on why I would defend a person who’s been charged with harming a child. The answer was simple: some people accused of these crimes are innocent. I eventually started defending not only clients I felt had been wrongly accused, but the potentially guilty, too. After much soul-searching, I realized that justice is complicated: Sometimes, perpetrators of sexual abuse were abused themselves as children. This doesn’t mean the courts shouldn’t hold them accountable, but it should be a mitigating factor to consider at plea or sentencing.
These days, if I like and respect the defense attorney on the case, I’ll join the defense team, report the facts, and help provide the best representation possible — regardless of whether I think the client is guilty. Everyone deserves a strong defense.
The Approach
It was a few days after Christmas. The brisk air hit my face as I walked to my car. As my mind drifted to my own children and grandchildren, I remember thinking, with dread: What if the allegations are true? How do I interview this child without adding to any harm already done?
I drove down a rutted dirt road into a rural, low-income neighborhood of run-down houses. The home, shared by three families, was oddly-shaped — long and sprawling, with peeling beige paint and ripped screens. Empty beer cans, trash, and cigarette butts littered a yard that was all weeds and no grass. The only dash of color on this home’s faded palate was a circle of plastic baubles glued to a small, handmade Christmas wreath in the window. Sitting in my car, I reflected for a moment on how fortunate I had been in this life. Then I took a breath, walked up to the door, and knocked.
A heavy-set woman answered the door and greeted me warmly. The crevices in her sun-beaten face made her appear much older than I knew she was. The home’s furnishings looked equally worn and threadbare. The living room’s main feature was a torn, brown velour couch so aged that the stains looked like patterns in the fabric. Patches of concrete showed through the worn linoleum kitchen floor. Someone had scrubbed every inch of the peeling walls, rusted sink, and too-small refrigerator, which proudly displayed photos, awards, and honor roll certificates for the children of the house. The shabbiness of the room was brightened by the sweet aroma of fresh apples and oranges in a bowl atop the large, tidy kitchen table.
There sat Mary, the young girl I had come to interview. Long, shiny black hair flowed halfway down her back. By now she was twelve, and she was going to be a striking woman someday. She had beautiful, chiseled features and big eyes that were so dark brown, they looked almost black.
To interview a minor, you have many hurdles to overcome. First, if you go through the district attorney, more times than not they’ll tell the family that they don’t have to talk to us, or that if they do talk to us, “they” (the DA) should be part of the interview — to keep the child safe. I’ve been doing this so long that most of the sex crimes DDAs here know me and my ethics. This helps, if I choose to contact the family through the DA’s office. But there’s nothing that says we have to go that route.
Usually, I start by contacting the child’s guardian directly. I explain who I am and what I do, then ask if they would allow me to interview the child. I invite them to sit in on the interview and reassure them that my job is nothing more than obtaining the truth.
The Interview
Interviewing a child of this age, especially about this type of crime, is always a delicate task. You must build rapport and gain their trust before asking questions about the accusation. If they have been abused, your legal team needs to know that. And if your client is innocent, you need to know that, too. It’s a tricky balance to simultaneously protect the child and represent your client. That’s why it’s vital, when interviewing minors who’ve made an accusation, to empower them to tell the truth.
I explained who I was and why I was there, but Mary’s eyes stayed glued to the floor, her foot tapping nervously. It was clear that she’d rather be anywhere than there with me, a stranger who was going to delve into very private realms of her mind.
As she sat quietly and I struggled to get a conversation started, I looked down, too, and noticed her worn tennis shoes, no longer white and a size too small. A sock peeked out through a hole in the toe. I also noted that she was wearing a name-brand hoodie. It looked like the newest and most expensive thing in the whole house.
“What a nice hoodie!” I said. “I like it.”
Mary looked up, and with a nervous smile, she brightened up. This was her “big present,” she told me proudly. She couldn’t believe she’d gotten such an expensive Christmas gift.
I asked her more about how Christmas had been, then about her family, her likes and dislikes, and school. Her eyes were now meeting mine, and she seemed more comfortable with me. After about fifteen minutes of this, I told her that I was there to talk to her about what had happened between her and her mother’s boyfriend.
She tensed up and started fidgeting. I explained to her, very gently, that my job was to find out the truth, and that this was a safe place to talk. I told her I didn’t care about anything that had been said before, I only wanted to know what was real.
The Truth
After a long silence, Mary looked me straight in the eyes and, at a near whisper, asked whether she would get into any trouble if she had lied about the abuse. I had to think quickly. I didn’t want to lose what she was probably about to tell me. I do know that when an adult lies to a police officer, they can be charged with a crime. But I’ve never seen the government charge a child with a crime for lying in these circumstances.
I reassured her that she could safely tell me the truth now.
I had formed a bond with her, but I was in dangerous territory. I had to be careful not to elicit answers that she thought I wanted to hear. So I veered into territory that many defense investigators would avoid. I told her that if someone had ever touched her inappropriately, I needed to know — because that was wrong, and she needed to be protected. I consider this territory “dangerous” because this is the moment when a child might tell me an answer I don’t want to hear.
But it’s our job to find out what happened, not just get the answer that we think will help our client.
Mary hung her head and whispered, “I lied.”
I did not let my face react. I didn’t want Mary to think that was the answer I wanted to hear. I just calmly said, “Okay. So, if you lied, I don’t care. All I really want is the truth.”
Mary looked me eye to eye and said, “I don’t like him.”
I asked her why.
Mary told me that she missed her dad and hoped her parents would get back together. Now that Juan and her mother were getting married, she knew that could never happen. She had to make sure Juan left and never married her mother. So she made up this story about Juan molesting her because she thought he’d have to leave the family.
“What did you think would happen to him if he had to leave?” I asked. Mary had no concept of jail or prison. She’d believed that if she made this outcry, someone would make Juan go away.
It’s a tricky balance to simultaneously protect the child and represent your client. That’s why it’s vital, when interviewing minors who’ve made an accusation, to empower them to tell the truth.
Then I asked Mary how she came up with the sexual allegations. It seemed odd to me that a child her age would come up with the idea of sexual abuse. Mary said she’d been taught in school that if someone touches you inappropriately, to tell an adult. The person would then be taken away, and the child would be protected.
Teary-eyed, Mary went on to tell me how, even though Juan was nice most of the time, he was strict with her and her brother and would ground her when she misbehaved. She didn’t like being punished and had used his strictness to justify these allegations to herself. She explained, as only a child could, how she didn’t like sharing her mother’s attention with Juan.
Before I ended the interview, I told Mary that I would return to my office and write a report on our conversation, including her admission that she’d lied and the reason why. I explained that the police and other attorneys would read my report and, in all probability, talk to her again and ask why she lied. She asked if she had to talk to “them.” I told her yes, she had lied, and now she needed to make it right.
The Reason
Several months later, the DA offered Juan a plea agreement. Based on my interview with Mary, they offered a “disturbing the peace” guilty plea (a misdemeanor) with time served. Sadly, this is a common practice in our field — the DA rarely wants to drop the charges altogether.
Although Juan knew that we would probably win this case with Mary’s statement, he just wanted to go home. He took the deal and was released later that night. He cried.
I will never forget Juan and Mary. And anytime someone asks me why I do what I do for a living, I think of that case, and I know exactly how to answer the question.
About the author:
Kathryn Lestelle is the owner and qualified manager of Lestelle Investigations. She’s licensed in the state of California and has been providing investigative services for forty-plus years in Southern California. Her firm has successfully investigated matters covering a vast arena of criminal charges. Kathryn has personally worked on over fifty death penalty cases, both at the State and Federal levels; numerous Federal/State Habeas cases, and thousands of civil and criminal cases ranging from simple assault to RICO and murder.