BY JANICE MORSE
The Cincinnati Enquirer
MIDDLETOWN -- The Rev. Darrell S. Bell and his daughter, Dawn, were two respected, well-known, well-liked people.
A preacher for more than 20 years and a longtime technical services employee of AK Steel Corp., the Rev. Mr. Bell also is known as a dedicated, strict father who attended his children's activities and insisted all four of them get college educations.
President of her 1996 Middletown High School class, Ms. Bell had carried a 3.5 grade-point average while participating in track, soccer, cheerleading, theater and forensics. She was crowned prom queen and homecoming queen.
A 1996 MHS yearbook photo shows father and daughter at homecoming, arm in arm, both wearing African-inspired attire. They appear cohesive and content.
Now they are courtroom adversaries. She is the accuser and he is the accused in a sex-abuse case that has devastated their family and divided their community. The case also highlights issues in the national debate about sexual abuse allegations that surface years later.
Last year, Ms. Bell, 20, began telling friends and relatives that her father often snuck into her bedroom, starting when she was 10, and repeatedly raped her until she turned 18 and went away to college.
Her father says the crimes never happened.
Following a five-day trial in Butler County Common Pleas Court, a jury couldn't decide which of them to believe. On Oct. 2, after 12 hours of deliberations, the jury acquitted Ms. Bell's father of one count and was unable to decide the other 13 charges against him.
"I think it's hard for (Ms. Bell) to understand why the jury didn't believe her. I think she was a little bit naive in that she believed if she got up there and told the truth, they'd believe her," county Assistant Prosecutor Patricia Downing said.
The Cincinnati Enquirer generally does not name complaining witnesses in sexual assault cases, but Ms. Bell consented to publication of her name, saying she wants to be an example to other women.
Ms. Downing, who said she believes Ms. Bell was truthful, is preparing for a possible retrial on the 13 felonies that could send the Rev. Mr. Bell, 44, to prison for several decades. He faces five counts of rape, five counts of sexual battery and three counts of felonious sexual penetration.
"I haven't made my mind up 100 percent, so there's still a possibility that there won't be a retrial," Ms. Downing said last week. "Regardless of my gut instincts, it comes down to a decision of whether I can legally prove that he did this, whether I can convince 12 people he did this."
Lawyers are to discuss the potential retrial Friday with Judge H.J. Bressler.
The Rev. Mr. Bell's lawyer, Robert Bostick of Dayton, Ohio, didn't respond to repeated requests for comment.
The jurors also have little to say.
"It was a very difficult thing to sit through. It was a very difficult deliberation, and it took a lot out of me," said Leslie Luff of Hamilton, her voice cracking. "I'd really rather not hash it up all again."
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SEXUAL CHILD ABUSE
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Some facts and statistics on child sexual abuse:
Several studies support estimates that at least 20 percent of American women and 5 percent to 16 percent of American men experienced sexual abuse as children.
The number of reported child sexual-abuse cases peaked in 1991 at nearly 450,000.
The number of reported child sexual-abuse cases declined to about 200,000 last year. Among those, 84,000 new cases were accepted for service by child protective agencies.
The most vulnerable ages for sexual abuse are 7-13.
Generally, children are sexually abused by adults who are related to them or known by them or their families. Studies show that only 10 percent to 30 percent of sexual abusers are strangers.
Sexual abuse occurs among all socioeconomic groups.
Source: National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse
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Seven other jurors were contacted by the Enquirer. Some described their jury experience as unpleasant. One juror's wife, who asked not to be identified, said the case cost her husband several sleepless nights.
Meanwhile, the Middletown community continues to grapple with its feelings about the case.
Formerly pastor of Bethlehem Pentecostal Church, the Rev. Mr. Bell said he has been a licensed minister since 1974 and continues to serve as a guest minister for various churches. He has been involved in numerous community groups including United Way and Pee-Wee football.
"I thought the world of him," said Middletown City Commissioner Robert "Sonny" Hill, who testified as a defense witness.
He remembers the community's reaction when the Rev. Mr. Bell was arrested in February: "People were just walking around here in shock."
Now, Mr. Hill said, "It hurts. It just hurts."
Van Barnette, who has lived in Middletown for most of his 77 years but is not personally acquainted with the Bell family, said the case has been the topic of discussion among patrons of The Broadway News shop downtown and other gathering places.
"I can't come to grips with it," he said. "I'm just like that jury."
The community is "very polarized," Mr. Barnette said, with about half believing the allegations and half disbelieving.
"I have difficulty believing a man of the cloth could do these things," he said. "At the same time, I have difficulty believing a young woman could orchestrate all this if it weren't true. But why did she wait so long?"
Ms. Downing, a prosecutor for nine years, says the vast majority of child sex-abuse allegations that come to her "are not immediate disclosures."
Victims are reluctant to come forward because they fear social stigma or because their abusers "play psychological games" that discourage disclosure, Ms. Downing said.
As a consequence, physical evidence is often difficult or impossible to get. That means these cases often boil down to one person's word against another's, Ms. Downing said.
Kim Hart, executive director of the National Child Abuse Defense and Resource Center near Toledo, Ohio, stressed that delayed disclosures must be evaluated in context.
"You need to look at the motive for what she said and when she said it," Ms. Hart said.
Ms. Bell testified she was dealing with a number of issues, including the alleged abuse, when she went away to Bowling Green State University, where she first disclosed the alleged abuse to a boyfriend. Then she visited a counselor twice and decided to discuss the abuse with others, including her father.
After she confronted him, he showed no remorse, Ms. Bell said. When she asked her father why he had abused her, Ms. Bell testified, "He said it was fun. It was this deep, dark secret that no one knew about him."
The Rev. Mr. Bell said that conversation never happened.
Ms. Bell also said two other relatives said her father had abused them, too -- and that pushed her to come forward to prevent anyone else from being victimized.
But both relatives denied being abused and denied telling Ms. Bell about it -- and the Rev. Mr. Bell insinuated his daughter might have an ulterior motive for making the allegations. He said he was withdrawing financial support from her, forcing her to pay her own way through college.
Despite any number of denials, the Rev. Mr. Bell is probably labeled for life, even if he's not guilty, Ms. Hart said.
"There's only one thing worse than a child abuser -- and that's to be falsely accused of being one," she said. "People don't realize what that label does."
The rights of the accused have been trampled, Ms. Hart said, because society so abhors the crime. "In these type of cases, you're actually guilty until proven innocent. I don't care what it says on paper," she said.
"You have more rights if you're accused of killing someone. . . . An accused child abuser will rot in prison while they let several murderers out first."
When child sexual abuse began to gain serious national attention in the mid-1980s, authorities embraced several tenets now known to be fallacies: Children wouldn't lie, children didn't know about sex and children didn't merely parrot responses adults expected them to give.
"Now we know those things aren't true," said Deborah Daro, director of the Center on Child Abuse Prevention Research in Chicago. Still, experts continue to disagree on how to best gauge whether an allegation is true.
"There's an enormous debate in this field. It's been a steady, simmering debate," Ms. Daro said.
"The problem is, there is no set profile," she said. "If all child sexual abusers wore raincoats and failed in their jobs, and all victims suffered from mental health problems and were ostracized, then our jobs would be easy. We would be able to know what happened."
For instance, in an interview while he awaited the jury's verdict, the Rev. Mr. Bell asserted that common sense suggests that abused children "show some sign," such as depression or underachievement. He questioned how his daughter could have accomplished so much and show virtually no ill effects if she had been repeatedly molested.
But Ms. Downing, the prosecutor, said Ms. Bell's achievements "made her all the more credible" than a runaway, unruly child might have been.
"You can look at it both ways," Ms. Daro observed. "That's the dilemma."
