Chapter 29

I was almost at the Blue Ridge when Kat called, so I just went in to talk to Chef instead of calling. He understood why I couldn’t train and he’d expected it, since Mrs. Leighton had called him from the police station to update him on what was happening.

I ended up getting to Hanna’s house right as Kat pulled up in an SUV being driven by Mrs. Leighton. As we all started getting out of our cars, Hanna came running outside, hugging Kat as soon as she was out of her car. Until this whole thing started, I hadn’t realized how close the two of them had become. It was a pretty far departure from Hanna hating Kat just a few months ago, because Kat had dated Aaron. Of course, that was before Hanna learned about Kat’s condition and how little control over her life Kat had.

While Kat caught Hanna up on everything that had happened that day and Mrs. Leighton went to talk to Mrs. Phillips, I carried Kat’s suitcase upstairs to the guest room. It was huge and incredibly heavy but I guess it was everything Kat thought she couldn’t live without, since she’d made it sound like she was never going back.

Mrs. Phillips had made the bed and set out some towels and other things that Kat might need, but otherwise, the room was pretty Spartan, since it was usually empty. By the time I got back downstairs, all four of them were in the living room, with Mrs. Leighton explaining what would happen from here.

“Right now, you’re here as a temporary measure while CPS continues its investigation. Normally that is all that would happen, but because you were removed from school and are not currently enrolled in another school, we believe this is grounds for a court to order a temporary assignment of guardianship.”

“Even if you get the guardianship assigned to me, it’s still temporary though, right?” Mrs. Phillips asked. “If the investigation finds no evidence of abuse, wouldn’t it revert back to her father? How would that affect a ruling assigning me guardianship?”

“Normally, yes. However, I think that’s unlikely here. First off, because she’s seventeen and able to give testimony to the abuse, and there is some evidence of the physical abuse beyond her testimony, I think the investigation is going to find that she should be removed from the home. More importantly, her birthday is two months from today. While preliminary investigations usually happen in seventy-two hours, if an agent does decide to open a full investigation, it could take months to conclude and probably several weeks more to petition the court for a reversal of the order granting temporary guardianship. If you’re granted legal guardianship tomorrow, there just isn’t enough time for her father to get it back before she turns eighteen.”

“What about after?” I asked. “She’s supposed to go to college and she’s been training to compete in swimming at an international level. Doesn’t he have to pay any kind of support if he loses guardianship? Isn’t there some kind of child support?”

“In this case, no. Child support is paid when a parent retains custodial rights and responsibility, but doesn’t have active custody of the child. When a parent loses all custodial rights, they don’t normally have any remaining responsibilities either. There are ways to force him to continue supporting her, however. We need to get past the guardianship first, but North Carolina allows a ten-year statute of limitations from the day she turns eighteen to sue her father for any abuse that occurred when she was a child. Since it was ongoing, this can be pretty significant.”

“Do we need to hire a lawyer to do that?” Mrs. Phillips asked.

I remember Hanna telling me about how bad her mother’s divorce lawyer was, which was probably why she seemed so concerned as she asked that question.

“One of the victims’ advocacy services we offer is helping child victims get restitution from their abusers, so no. We’ll be able to help you with that so you don’t have to find the money for a lawyer. We understand just taking in someone else’s child can be a burden for a new guardian, so we don’t want to have to push that on you as well. I normally deal with the family law cases, so we’ll have one of the attorneys who assist us with civil actions contact you about starting that process.”

“When can I go back to school?”

“Your hearing isn’t until the early afternoon, so we probably won’t have the order until it’s too late to file the actual guardianship papers until Monday, which means it’ll probably be some time in the middle of next week.”

“But I’ll be able to go back?”

“As long as Mrs. Phillips gets legal guardianship, yes. Since you weren’t enrolled in any other schools after your withdrawal, they can’t mark you as transferred, meaning they have to allow you to return, although there’s a good chance you’ll have a lot of makeup work to do.”

“Kat’s a genius. She’ll be able to catch up,” Hanna said.

“What about a psychiatrist?” I asked. “Her father would never get her evaluated, but I know you heard from Dr. Rothstein about her condition. If Mrs. Phillips has guardianship, can she start getting help?”

“Yes, although you won’t be able to have her father pay for it and the lawsuit can take some time. I wouldn’t expect anything until next year at the earliest. So any help she does get will be out of pocket.”

“Can I put her on my insurance?” Mrs. Phillips asked.

“It’s unlikely. If Mrs. Phillips has foster guardianship of her, then she’d be eligible for Medicaid coverage until she’s twenty-six or able to cover her own expenses, but temporary guardianship outside of the foster care system is kind of a crack in the system. Since her father no longer has custody, he doesn’t have to carry her insurance but it’s unlikely any insurance company would allow a temporary ward to be enrolled as a dependent.”

“That sucks,” Hanna said.

“I know. Unfortunately, temporary guardianships like this are somewhat uncommon, so there just isn’t a system in place to support kids like Katherine.”

“I think maybe we need to let Katherine rest. She’s already had a long day and tomorrow’s not going to be any better.”

Kat had been slowly shutting down during the conversation, but especially during the last part. It was a good bet her anxiety was going into overdrive, since there was always the outside chance that Mrs. Phillips wouldn’t get guardianship, which meant she’d end up back with her dad. Mrs. Leighton had tried to allay some of those fears, but someone with Kat’s level of anxiety wouldn’t really listen to that.

“You’re probably right. I need to make the drive back to my offices and start preparing for tomorrow. I’ll meet you here at around noon so we can prepare Katherine for what’s going to happen tomorrow, and then we can all drive over together.”

“Can people come watch the case?”

“I don’t know. It really depends on the judge on the day. Sometimes they seal courtrooms when it involves a minor, but I’ve seen them leave it open for seventeen-year-olds before. You can come and see if they’ll let you in.”

“Okay.”

I’d have to skip baseball practice, but there was a good chance with all of the bullshit with Harry lately Coach Dean would give me a one-time exception. If I had to skip without permission, I would. This would be tough on Kat and I wanted to be there to support her if at all possible.

Coach Dean approved my missing practice when I told him I had a family activity that I had to attend, which was a lie, but only a little one. Chef had already told me it was okay for me to miss a second class in a row the night before when I’d called him, since he knew about the court case.

The hearing itself was being held in Asheville since the courthouse in Wellsville had one part-time judge that dealt with non-felony crimes and municipality issues. Any civil cases, felonies, or specialty cases like family court was handled in Asheville. I took it as a good sign that, after we drove an hour we were at least allowed inside the courtroom, which was open to spectators.

It had taken us longer to get there after school let out than either of us thought, and the trial was already underway when we walked in.

“ ... and how often did these assaults occur?” Mrs. Leighton was asking Kat.

“It varied. Sometimes it would be a couple of days in a row, other times it would be weeks in between. He travels for work a lot, and he’d have a family friend come and stay with me, instead. He’d usually want to ... uhh, do it again when he came back from his trip, though.”

“You described one of these encounters. Is that how it went most of the time?”

“No. Sometimes he was ... angry about something and he’d hurt me when he did it.”

“Is that the only time he hurt you?”

“No. I mean, he didn’t hurt me on purpose that much when I was younger, but once I started saying no, he’d get really angry and would slap and punch me.”

“What else did he do when you started turning away his advances?”

“He thought someone I knew, one of my friends, was the reason why I’d started saying no. Before Christmas when I decided to start standing up for myself, I’d never really said no. I’d just ... accepted that was what a good daughter was supposed to do. He said I wasn’t to spend time with anyone else anymore and that I could only go to school, swim practice, and home.”

“And did you do that?”

“No. When he was at work or traveling, I’d still go out with my friends. That was working okay, except for the bruises my friends would ask me about, until he came home from a trip early a few weeks ago and I wasn’t home when I should have been. He found me at the school talking to a friend after his baseball practice. He was so angry I’d disobeyed him. He came charging at me like he was going to hurt me, but my friend got in the way, so he just took me home. The next day he pulled me out of school and told me he was going to find an all-girls school for me to go to where I wouldn’t be around bad influences.”

“So you haven’t been to school in several weeks, then?”

“No.”

“He still went to work though, during the day. Is that correct? How did he make sure you didn’t sneak out?”

“He had my aunt stay. She isn’t really my aunt, that’s just what I’ve always called her. He told her I was on drugs and that I’d try to go out and get more, so that she’d watch me and keep me from sneaking out.”

“And were you on drugs?”

“No, ma’am. I’ve never done drugs in my life.”

“That’s all my questions.”

“Mr. Levitt, do you have any questions for the witness?” the judge asked.

“Katherine, do you have any proof to these claims of abuse?” a lawyer in what looked like a very expensive suit said.

“I don’t know what you mean by proof.”

“Did anyone see it happen? Was he ever caught touching or engaging with you inappropriately?”

“Of course not. He never did it when other people were around. I have the bruises though.”

“And before Christmas when you made new friends, had you ever spoken to anyone about this abuse before?”

“No,” she said, almost shrinking back into herself.

“Before you started making these accusations, before Christmas, did you suddenly change large portions of your routine, like suddenly ignoring old friends and breaking up with your boyfriend?”

“I ... what does that have to do with anything?”

“Don’t you find it odd that you never once mentioned this abuse that had been, in your words, going on since you were little? All of a sudden you change large aspects of your life. Getting rid of friends and breaking up with your boyfriend at the exact same time that you started making up these stories? What did you start doing that made you change your life so drastically?”

She was getting scared and I could see her anxiety was starting to go off the chart. She started looking around the room desperately until she found me in the back of the courtroom. I’d anticipated how difficult this would have been for her, so before I left I told her that if she started feeling anxious I wanted her to find me in the courtroom, so she could see that I was there to support her, and that I wanted her to be brave and answer their questions. I knew it would take a toll on her, but if she could get through this, we could actually start her on a path to recovery.

Her eyes locked with mine and she took a few breaths before looking back at the lawyer and saying, “I decided to start standing up for myself. My boyfriend took advantage of me and wanted me to do things with his friends, and the ‘friends’ I stopped hanging out with saw it happening and didn’t try to stop it. It’s why I started telling people about what he was doing and why I started saying no when he wanted to use me again. I decided I wasn’t going to be afraid anymore.”

“So it wasn’t the drugs that caused this sudden behavior change.”

“I told you, I don’t do drugs.”

The lawyer walked back to the table her father was sitting at and picked up a piece of paper, holding it up.

“Your Honor, I have here a drug test done a week and a half ago by her father. He was concerned for his daughter’s behavior and took some hair from one of her brushes, mailing it to a company that offers testing remotely. These results will show traces of both THC, the chemical component of marijuana and methamphetamines.”

“That’s a lie,” Kat yelled out. “I don’t do any of that.”

“Ms. Moore, please only speak when asked questions. Let your lawyer handle any objections.”

“Your Honor,” Mrs. Leighton said, standing up. “We have no way to know how the lab could verify that the samples her father sent in were in fact from Ms. Moore.”

“Noted, counselor. Mr. Levitt, do you have any further questions?”

“A few more, Your Honor.”

“Proceed.”

“Katherine, when all these changes happened after Christmas, did you also ask your father to take you to see a psychiatrist?”

“Yes. He didn’t want to take me, though.”

“Did you also start telling your friend, or former friends, that you had a serious mental illness around the same time?”

“I told them I had a condition that made me have a lot of anxiety, and that was why I’d let Aaron and the others talk me into things I didn’t want to do.”

“So you found you had what you’ve told former friends was a serious mental illness before you suddenly began acting completely uncharacteristically, changing your friends, making accusations of lifelong abuse that you’d never once mentioned before and, as we’ve shown, doing drugs after finding a new group of friends to hang out with?”

“It’s not like that,” Kat said angrily.

“I’m sure it’s not,” the lawyer said before turning to the judge. “I’m finished with this witness, Your Honor.”

“I have a few re-direct questions for Ms. Moore, Your Honor.”

“Go ahead.”

“Katherine, did your father ever take you to a psychiatrist?”

“No.”

“Have you received a diagnosis of any kind for any kind of psychological or mental illness?”

“No.”

Mrs. Leighton had gone over these with Kat the night before, since we knew there was a chance it would come up. Although her father didn’t know about Dr. Rothstein, she had told him that she had asked him to take her to get help from a psychologist after that one session with Rothstein, and mentioned she had a condition that was causing her problems. Mrs. Leighton had felt there was a good chance that her father’s lawyer would bring it up as a way to discredit her testimony about the abuse, which was the thing the entire guardianship hearing was about.

She had to be careful of how she asked the question, however, since the last thing they wanted to admit was that she had, in fact, talked to a doctor and had her condition identified. The last thing we wanted was to actually confirm that Kat had any kind of mental condition, since it might convince the judge to doubt her claims.