PANAMA CITY — The arrest of Larry Stanfill on suspicion of committing a sex crime against a child last month came as no surprise to Lori Allen.
Allen, the director of the Gulf Coast Children’s Advocacy Center (GCCAC), remembered her frustration when, in 2012, a similar case against Stanfill fell apart and he pleaded no contest to a battery charge and was sentenced to probation.
She met with prosecutors and police, and she warned them: It was only a matter of time before Stanfill victimized another child.
“This definitely is kind of the impetus for what we’re doing now,” Chief Assistant State Attorney Greg Wilson said of the case.
Since then, prosecutors, police, child protection investigators and advocates have taken a new approach to building cases against people accused of hurting children like Paige Ovington.
Paige was the victim of a sex crime when she was 8. The only connection between her case and Stanfill’s is her’s came to an end as child protection workers were beginning a collaborative effort in response to the collapse of Stanfill’s previous case.
With the help of a team of people including Liz Berry, the program coordinator for KidsCourt, Paige and her family were able to overcome the hurdles that often trip up prosecutions and see the man who hurt her sentenced to five years in prison.
But their two-year ordeal was never easy.
“It was the worst experience of our life, but there was people there to help us,” said Kim Ovington, Paige’s mother. “They helped us every step of the way. They let us know that it was going to be OK.”
It started with an action that might seem simple: Paige told.
But so few children actually take that first step, said Tasha Jackson, a GCCAC therapist who worked with Paige and her family. Only one in 10 children who have been sexually victimized will ever tell anyone, Jackson tells her clients.
“That’s one of the hardest things sometimes — is getting kids to want to tell you,”said Alissa Cross, who supervises a team of child protective investigators for the Department of Children and Families.
2 percent
In Florida, not even 2 percent of sex crimes against children result in successful prosecution, Allen said, even though, according to Jackson, 93 percent of children who report a sex crime are telling the truth.
Crimes against children are among the most difficult cases prosecutors are faced with, and with one the highest reporting rates in the state, the 14th Judicial Circuit has way too many of them, Allen said.
To see her abuser punished, Paige had to tell and retell. She had to tell her brother, then her father, then the investigators, then, in what was perhaps the most difficult telling, she had to tell her abuser’s attorney in a very difficult deposition.
“They badgered this baby so bad they made a law that you can’t do that anymore,” said Pat Crider, Paige’s grandmother. “They brutalized that baby sitting right there.”
After the attorney requested a second deposition, prosecutors asked for an administrative order restricting defense attorneys from subjecting victims in child sex crime cases to repeated and prolonged questioning.
Finally, with her abuser in the courtroom, Paige told the jurors, but not all of them were convinced. When the jury deadlocked, the case ended in a mistrial, and prosecutors and the Ovingtons decided a plea deal that resulted in a prison sentence would be better than risking an acquittal.
Defendant Troung Nguyentook the deal and is serving a five-year prison term.At the sentencing hearing last fall, the prosecutor gave Paige a copy of an administrative order outlining how child victims in the 14th circuit are to be treated and limiting the questioning to which they can be subject.
Paige is thriving now, Allen said. She and her family attend events for child victims of sex abuse, and she meets other children in similar situations. They share their stories, and Paige said she gets strength from the encouragement of the older children.
Paige, now 10, has grown comfortable enough telling her story to tell it publicly, which she and her family decided to do for several reasons.
She’s grateful to the people like Jackson and Berry who helped her in difficult time in her life.
She also wants other children in her situation to know there are people who will help them, so those kids become comfortable talking, too.
“I want other kids to know that even if you’re afraid you should tell,” Paige said.
People tell Paige often how brave she is. Paige feels brave, but she doesn’t feel extraordinary. Any child in her situation could do what she did, if they have help, she said.
“As long as they try,” she said. “If they go to the (GCCAC) they would help them every step of the way.”
Difficult to prove
Prosecuting cases with child victims is hard enough in cases like Paige’s, where the victims have great support from their families. Often, that’s not the case, and instead there’s a family dynamic at play that works against prosecutors, Child Protective Investigator Anjanetta Bryant said.
Part of the problem that lead cases like the one against Larry Stanfill to collapse, as Allen and other officials saw it, was the compartmentalization of the various agencies working to protect children and punish people who hurt them.
Everyone was working toward the same goal, but they weren’t always on the same page about what they would need from each other to reach it. Communication gaps became the cracks for cases to slip through.
It took some time and planning, but Wilson and Allen came up with a plan.
“We recognized a need to have somebody dedicated full time to those cases,” Wilson said.
Wilson shifted relatively simple cases away from Assistant State Attorney Christa Diviney’s caseload and assigned her to work directly on crimes against children. That meant other prosecutors would shoulder comparatively simple drug cases, but it turned Diviney into the go-to person for police and Department of Children and Families (DCF) investigators.
Allen found a work space for Diviney at the GCCAC’s offices on 11th Street. Police, prosecutors, DCF investigators and victims’ advocates began to get together for monthly “lunch and learn” events to review cases and discuss ways to improve them.
The result has been “a huge increase in communications,” Wilson said.
Better communication leads to better questions in victim interviews, which leads to better information for law enforcement and better witnesses for prosecutors, Berry said.
“We want the attorneys to have as much information as we can provide for them,” Berry said.
Positive results
The collaborative approach began in September, so evidence of its success is only anecdotal at this time, Allen said. She collects data that will help them determine how well it’s working, but not for another year or so, she said.
But Bryant and Cross said they’re already seeing positive results from working as a team.
The improved communication is leading to tighter cases, they said. They’re getting information from more sources. If a defendant is trying to tamper with the case from the jail over the phone, they’re learning about it, and they’re taking the child out of that home.
Seeing children in trouble every day can take an intense physical and emotional toll on people in this field, Cross said. Having a prosecutor who understands that is important, Cross said.
“It takes a very special person to be able work in this field every day, because it’s not easy. … Hard isn’t even a big enough word for this job,” Cross said. “It is so important when you have that person, in this case Christa, that is equally as dedicated as you are to helping these families and these children.”