When Knowing Comes by Kelly Green

Author:Kelly Green
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Safe Passage Press LLC
Published: 2023-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Eighteen

EXPERT WITNESS

2022

TRIAL

Whoomp, there it is! Whoomp, there it is! Robbie suppressed his mirth over the new earworm spawned in response to the next witness, the expert hired by Ace to talk about child abuse stuff. Given how much the guy cost, the moment was big. Anyway, it should feel big—there it is! Ace had convinced Robbie they needed this guy for their case. The AAYA had their own expert psychologist who got paid to say Robbie was fine, really-fine. But first, it was Robbie’s turn for his expert psychologist to explain why Robbie wasn’t fine, really-not-fine, why abuse distorted his normal childhood development and made Robbie the fuck-up he was. Whoomp.

The balding, middle-aged white man wore a tan suit with wire-rimmed glasses and sat straight, like he had a broomstick up his ass. He held his head high and pinched his nose while Ace questioned him. His tone had a casualness typical of the highly successful trying to act like, oh yeah, Stanford, blah blah, Harvard, blah blah, no big deal, except of course it is a big deal. Be impressed. Be very impressed. But the jury was rapt, so maybe the guy was worth the small fortune he’d charge.

Ace had wrapped up Dr. Schmidt’s extensive education and experience in the field, then followed up with his publications in such-and-such high-brow specialty periodical and blah blah blah. Robbie was astonished that the jury was captivated by this boredom-fest, but they were. Ace knew his stuff and clearly picked the right guy for the job. An hour into the testimony, Dr. Schmidt described the litany of materials he had reviewed in preparation. Mostly, they comprised legal briefs, medical reports, and the like. After he established the expert’s extensive background, Ace would begin questions about the doctor’s formalized opinion. Robbie braced himself for this next assault when the doc would rip deeper, exposing Robbie’s shame to the world. As if they haven’t seen enough.

“Doctor Schmidt, is it your experience that children often misreport sexual contact with adults or later change their story?” Ace asked.

“Objection. Compound,” Vilipend interjected.

“I’ll rephrase. Is it your experience that children frequently change their stories about sexual contact with adults?”

“Yes,” the doctor answered. “Children can react to trauma by shutting down, by trying to forget what happened. So, when a child is questioned near the time of the event, it is fairly typical they don’t get all the details correct. Sometimes, after becoming an adult, a person will remember events more clearly than they did as a child.”

“They forget…” Ace stopped mid-sentence, shook his head, and began again. “How is that poss…” Again, Ace cut himself off. He looked down at his shoes and visibly exhaled while formulating his next attempt. Lifting his head to look straight at the expert, he said, “Please explain how a child would not recall specific information soon after an incident, but could recall an incident in great detail several years later.”

“It’s possible that someone learned information over time from other sources and incorporated that into their own memory.

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