Defiance

Solitary for a twelve-year-old

The witness in the Solano County, Calif., Municipal Court was a twelve-year-old girl named Amy, and Judge John DeRonde was cold and impersonal as he asked her to take the oath and testify. The girl, neatly dressed in jeans and a white blouse, replied with a nervous smile that she would not. The startled judge and prosecutor explained that the law required Amy to take the witness stand. Again she politely refused.

Judge DeRonde then took an action that shocked the nation: he ordered Amy held at the Solano County Juvenile Hall until she agreed to testify. She remained there in solitary confinement for eight days. Her only offense: refusing to testify against her stepfather, who was accused of sexually molesting her.

The facts of the California case were more tortuous than a television melodrama: a family therapist, acting under the demands of a 1980 state law requiring that child abuse be reported, gave Solano County officials information about a physician who was alleged to have molested his stepdaughter. The information had been obtained during a counseling session with the doctor, his wife and the girl. As a result, the stepfather was charged with child molestation. He signed a confession, but Amy's corroborating evidence was needed in order to prosecute. When she refused to testify. Judge DeRonde found her in contempt and ordered her confined in the county juvenile facility, where she was isolated in a 10-ft. by 12-ft. room furnished with a bed, toilet and sink. Deputy District Attorney Kenneth Kobrin said the detention was the equivalent of being "sent to her room." He added that the coercion was necessary to protect other children who might be examined by her stepfather, who is an Air Force physician.

Day after day Amy was brought to court. Each time she refused to testify, even after a higher court placed her in a foster home. She was refusing "for personal reasons," she said at one point. Finally, the defiant brown-haired girl won the test of wills. Charges against her stepfather | were dismissed last week, and Amy was taken home.

Although many people questioned the propriety of putting a child, and a victim besides, in solitary confinement, Stanford University Law Professor Michael Wald believes that Judge DeRonde acted within his rights. Nonetheless, Wald says, locking up an uncooperative juvenile was "inappropriate" as long as there were alternatives like foster care. Meanwhile, at least one spectator at the | court proceedings was sufficiently angered by the dropping of charges to take direct action. When the stepfather left the courthouse, he was confronted by Amy's natural father, who, in front of TV cameras, took a swing at him. -