By Shavonne Potts
spotts@salisburypost.com
Jurors began deliberations Wednesday morning in an incest trial where the victim, then 8, said her stepfather, raped her.
“Can you imagine what it must have been like for (the victim) to think she had nobody in the world she could go to,” said Assistant District Attorney Karen Biernacki, in her closing arguments.
Her mother was a prostitute and she had been passed around from place to place, Biernacki said.
The Post does not identify victims of sex crimes and is not naming the man to protect the identity of the victim.
The trial began Monday, in which the defendant is accused of raping the girl on several occasions when she was 8 years old. She is now 13 and living in Monroe.
She testified Tuesday that he raped her more than three times, but she only recalls in great detail the first time.
Presiding Superior Court Judge Richard L. Doughton dismissed most of the charges against the defendant, saying the victim did not provide specific details of the alleged abuse.
Biernacki asked jurors to believe the young girl’s story because that’s all the victim wanted.
“She lived through things no child should ever have to live through,” she said.
The defendant’s attorney, Trippe McKeny, said the victim is not credible. She told Rowan County Sheriff’s Detective Linda Porter she’d been raped two times a week from the end of second grade until the beginning of third grade. She later said it was maybe three times. McKeny asked jurors to think back to when the victim paused on the witness stand.
“Was that fear or was she creating a lie?” McKeny asked.
See Thursday’s Post for more details.