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Lead investigator Barbara Stio spoke of a missing portion of the interview video, as well as altered notes and anatomical dolls that were used.
Stio, now retired from the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, said she was watching Sgt. Cora Taylor interview the girl in 2010 from behind mirrored glass at the Children’s House in Hackensack when she noticed the image vanish from the recorder’s monitor 21 minutes in.
The interview nonetheless continued, she told Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Kenneth Ralph during direct examination. “I assumed we would still have sound,” she said.
Stio said she then began making notes of the interview for backup.
No one has explained what happened to the equipment.
Cross-examined for nearly four hours by defense attorney Brian Neary, Stio spoke of her note-taking, her investigative technique and alterations she made to the notes after the interview concluded.
Taylor followed the “Cornerhouse” protocol for interviewing child victims of sexual abuse, which is standard for the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office and several other law enforcement agencies, she said.
Neary, a former prosecutor, noted that in the Cornerhouse book, children the age of the girl ideally shouldn’t be interviewed for more than 20 to 25 minutes.
Stio disagreed, saying that such interviews could continue “as long as the child is focused.”
In this case, it was slightly over two hours, she said.
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DAY ONE: Showing considerable composure, an 8-year-old girl testified in Hackensack today that former FOX 5 reporter Charles Leaf never touched her and that molestation allegations she made to a therapist years ago were fed to her by her nanny, whom she called “Weronika.” READ MORE ….
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Stio also said that her notes weren’t a verbatim account of what was said.
“I was taking down everything I could,” she testified.
Stio also told Neary that she wasn’t made aware at the time of any discussions the girl’s nanny, Weronika Karwowska, might have had with the youngster.
Testifying yesterday, the girl — now 8 — said that Leaf never touched her and that the nanny frightened her into saying that he did.
Karwowska is expected to testify later in the trial.
STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia
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