The players may have changed, but the hell has not. Maura covers up well.
Police interrogate brother about rape allegations
Second in a six-part series
Chapter 1: The allegations
RELATED CONTENT: PDF: Police report in the Wendrow case (1.8MB) | PDF: Care House interview evaluation in the Wendrow case | VIDEO: Police interrogate the teen boy
Chapter 2: The investigation
In an interview room at CARE House of Oakland County, Amy Allen asked the girl whether she could log on to the computer.
The 14-year-old girl hit the "Y" key for "yes." But then, she just sat there with the specialized laptop that was designed to help her communicate.
Allen, a CARE House interviewer and former employee of the Oakland County Prosecutor's Office, was responsible for interviewing the girl that day about rape allegations she made using facilitated communication. Allen had no experience with autism and had never heard of FC when she met the girl that day.
She persisted.
"Would you like to log on?"
The girl hit the "Y" key again. Then nothing.
"Are you able to log on?" Allen asked.
Again the "Y" key, but nothing else.
There were more questions. And always, the "Y" key in response. Eventually, the girl's grandmother, who had taken her to the interview, intervened and logged on for her.
Soon, school aide Cynthia Scarsella, who had been called to CARE House by police, started supporting the girl's hand. Two days earlier, the girl was at school with Scarsella, a facilitator hired to support her hand over the keyboard, when she first typed that her father had sexually abused her for years, while her mother stood by and did nothing.
During the interview of more than an hour, the girl, sometimes rocking and moaning, again typed -- with Scarcella supporting her hand -- allegations that her father had been sexually assaulting her. The statements, with phonetic spellings and little punctuation, also brought new claims that her younger brother, 13, had been abusing her, too.
There were graphic details. The facilitated typing described early morning rapes while others in the house remained asleep and several kinds of assaults, including some by her brother while her father watched. The statements said the girl had told her mother, who "pretends not to no."
The typed messages also had factual errors -- such as a passage describing nonexistent relatives, including a grandmother. She got the family dog's name wrong and misspelled her brother's name. She said her father had videos of her nude. She incorrectly described the layout of her home.
She typed that her parents, Julian and Thal Wendrow, were angry with her over the allegations.
"They said I'm a lier and I'm going to hell because I'm using my imagination and know one will believe me because I'm autistic."
A credible witness?
The girl's interview at CARE House, a Pontiac agency that specializes in forensic interviews of children, took place on Nov. 29, 2007.
West Bloomfield Detective Tara Kane, working on her first child sexual assault investigation, stood behind a one-way mirror and watched. With her were several more experienced investigators, including Sgt. Daniel O'Malley; Deputy Eric Overall, the Walled Lake schools liaison officer; Rob Giles, chief of the child sexual assault unit in the Prosecutor's Office; Veronica Burke, who specializes in autism in the district's special services office, and state social worker Rebecca Robydek.
None of them asked questions about facilitated communication, including why the girl could plug in the computer but didn't have enough motor control to type.
When it was over, Giles filled out a form summarizing the interview he'd watched and marked that the girl was a credible witness. He noted no communication problems.
His report didn't mention that the girl couldn't speak or type on her own. He sent it on to the Prosecutor's Office as part of the warrant request, while the children were placed in the custody of state workers.
What a nurse found
After the CARE House interview, Robydek, a social worker with the Department of Human Services, took the girl to a nurse for a rape exam at a local medical facility.
The child brought her keyboard, but without a facilitator to help, she typed only gibberish.
Later, Robydek was asked whether she had concerns about facilitated communication while watching the girl randomly pound away on the keyboard.
"I sure did. ... I said to the police, 'Have you ever seen this before? How does this work?' " she testified in a July 2009 deposition. "No, they had not seen it, either."
Nurse Diane Zalecki, who examined the girl, found three tiny, non-acute tears on an otherwise intact hymen. Zalecki warned that she couldn't conclude they came from sexual abuse and noted that they appeared to have occurred well before any alleged rape a few days before.
In depositions, Robydek, who holds a bachelor's degree in science from Western Michigan University, would describe them as "acute" tears. She later testified she didn't know the difference between "acute," something occurring rapidly and usually severe, and "non-acute," typically a chronic or long-term condition.
The day after the physical exam, three patrol cars arrived at the Wendrows' home with a search warrant.
As the couple sat on a couch, police officers went through closets and cupboards. They carted off the family computer, cameras and photo albums.
Both parents felt helpless and embarrassed, wondering what the neighbors were thinking.
"We weren't worried about the search," Thal Wendrow said. "Because there was nothing to find."
Brother interrogated
Meanwhile, Family Court Judge Joan Young ordered the girl placed with prominent West Bloomfield Rabbi Levi Shemtov and his family, who were friends of the Wendrows. The girl's brother, who has been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, a milder form of autism, was placed with a family member.
Four days later, Robydek, the social worker, took the boy to the West Bloomfield Police Department, where a detective interrogated him for two hours.
His parents weren't there. He had no attorney present. His court-appointed guardian, Abbie Shuman of Southfield, wasn't notified of the interrogation, so she wasn't there, either.
Detective Joseph Brousseau told the crying boy he had tapes of his father sexually assaulting the girl. He also said he had tapes of the boy assaulting his sister and crime lab evidence that implicated his father.
None of it was true, but it would be months before the boy would learn that.
Believing the police actually had tapes and lab evidence implicating his father, the boy cried, "I've lost the image I had of my dad, the image of a trustworthy person!"
But the boy insisted, repeatedly, that there was no abuse in the house. Brousseau continued to press.
"Bullshit, man!" he shouted, as the boy rocked, wept and wiped his nose. "You know what was going on because you've experienced it firsthand."
Later, Brousseau warned: "You think you feel guilty now? Wait until later, when that guilt just eats at you because you didn't do the right thing and help your sister."
"Man up," the detective pressed on. "Tell the truth."
Finally, the boy gave up what police believed was incriminating evidence: His father sometimes showered nude with the girl because she couldn't wash her own hair. Thal Wendrow did the same, although that wasn't asked in the interview.
Experts on families with disabled children say parents sometimes shower with their kids. "You can see on a practical level why they would, as a matter of convenience," said Dr. Lori Warner, a psychology professor at Oakland University and director of a parent-training program at Beaumont Health Systems for families with autism.
"I suppose you could say the parent should wear a bathing suit, but a child with these sorts of disabilities, she's not thinking, 'Why is my parent nude?' "
Julian Wendrow was asked during a deposition about showering with his daughter.
"It's usually arisen out of necessity. Someone else hasn't been available. Usually, I will say, 'Thal, you know, she needs to shower and go help her,' " he testified. "This is not something I enjoy or relish or I -- I'm a father. I have to, you know, take care of my child. That's basically it."
Police also were interested in another episode the boy recounted. His father, while wearing a bathrobe, came out of the bathroom with the tip of his penis exposed, and said to the boy, "Find the mouse."
Julian Wendrow, in a June 2009 deposition, said he was "goofing around."
"It was just a silly, stupid, goofing thing. That's all," he said.
After the boy's interrogation, state social workers placed him in a Pontiac facility for juvenile delinquents, where he was exposed to drugs and pornography in the months he was there, according to court records.
Parents are arrested
Back in school on Dec. 5, the girl made more allegations with the facilitator guiding her hand.
She typed about a visit with her parents that morning. Shemtov left the house at 3 a.m. and brought her parents and several relatives from South Africa back to the house, the message said -- a direct violation of a court order.
Her parents told her they were angry with her and would soon be taking her to South Africa, according to the message. She also typed that her parents had guns and would harm Scarsella.
School officials called police.
Shemtov, a community leader and founder of Friendship Circle, a nonprofit center for families with children who have special needs, told investigators and the news media that visit never occurred.
Prosecutors, who declined to talk to Shemtov, moved ahead and charged the Wendrows criminally. They accused Julian Wendrow of sexual assault and his wife of turning a blind eye to the abuse.
Later that day, Julian Wendrow was napping at home when pounding on the front door awoke him. He peered out a window to see West Bloomfield police dressed in SWAT gear. He didn't answer the door, but instead called his mother-in-law's home to check on his wife.
"Tali's been arrested," his mother-in-law told him, using her daughter's nickname.
He called his lawyer, Jerome Sabbota, who told him to follow procedures and say nothing.
He threw on some clothes as the phone rang. It was a police officer, asking whether he was at home.
He walked out his back door, where three officers arrested him. His neighbors stared out their kitchen window as he was handcuffed.
The officers "told me I was being arraigned. I'd get bond and be home in a few hours," he said.
He doubted things would work out that way.
"My stomach was churning like a concrete mixer," he said.
As he was being placed in the back of the patrol car, he realized he hadn't had time to put on socks -- an oversight he'd soon regret.
Interrogation videos
I am unable to embed the videos but strongly encourage everyone to take a few moments to look at them.
These videos show the interrogation of the Wendrows’ 13-year-old son by West Bloomfield Police Det. Joseph Brousseau. The boy was questioned Dec. 4, 2007, as part of the investigation into claims that Julian Wendrow, the boy’s father, had raped his then 14-year-old daughter. The two-hour interview was recorded in the interview room of the West Bloomfield Police Department. The Free Press, which first published the videos March 16, 2008, has obscured the boy’s face and deleted references to the first names of the children. The Wendrow family later sued West Bloomfield Township, and its insurance carrier paid $1.8 million to the Wendrow family to settle all claims against the Police Department.
Early in the two-hour interrogation, Detective Brousseau tells the13-year-old that police have uncovered other evidence supporting his autistic sister's allegations of sexual abuse. The detective never explains what evidence he is referring to.
Brousseau tells the 13-year-old that the boy's body language suggests he knows more than he's saying about his sister's allegations. Experts who have reviewed the video say the detective may have misinterpreted symptoms of Asperger's syndrome, a condition for which the boy was treated for 10 years, as evidence of guilt or evasion.
The 13-year-old boy says he's questioning his father's innocence based on what Brousseau has told him.
As the boy continues to insist he has never had sexual contact with his father, Brousseau says that police have discovered evidence of sexual contact between the boy and his sister. No such evidence existed.
Brousseau returns to the interrogation room after a 10-minute absence to report that crime lab technicians have uncovered new, unspecified evidence that points to the boy's own involvement in sexual abuse. No such evidence existed.
Pressed to remember situations when his father and sister have been together, the boy tells Brousseau he has seen his father help his disabled sister shower while his father was naked. A psychologist who treated the girl for many years said she was aware of the father's actions and not alarmed by them, because the autistic girl frequently became "frozen" and required her parents' assistance to bathe.
As the boy continues to deny any knowledge of sexual abuse in his home, Brousseau expresses doubts about his honesty.
The boy asks to take a lie detector test; Brousseau tells him his father has refused to submit to a polygraph. Julian Wendrow's lawyer says he vetoed the polygraph when he learned Wendrow had volunteered to take one.
Brousseau insists the boy has firsthand knowledge of sexual abuse in his parents' home.
Brousseau hints that videotapes recovered in a search of the parents' house depict the boy in sexual situations with family members, and warns that "it's going to come out." No such videos were found. You will hear a tone where the Free Press has removed a name from this clip.
The boy tells Brousseau he no longer sees his father as trustworthy. The detective insists that the father forfeited his son's trust "a long time ago."
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