Katie Beers (34 page)

And then the drilling began anew.

And the creak of doors opening.
“Katie you up?Katie?” “Katie you up? Katie, Katie you up? You okay? Sleeping?”

Katie was crying.
“You still sick? You okay? It’s good for you to eat. You have to go
to the bathroom… or anything?”

The Chief appeared at the door while I was listening to the captivity tape, to ask me how I was holding up.

“I don’t even know if Esposito is aware this tape is on. It records only what’s loud enough to be captured. It’s a window into the interaction between the abductor and the victim, a window you never get first hand. I think his actions are obvious; he is cultivating a love affair. An inappropriate love affair with a ten-year-old.”

Katie, though, was doing her own manipulating. “She’s convincing him she’s sick. We think this is what finally drives him over the edge, ‘Oh my God, she’s gonna die…I better get her out of here.’ As for Katie, it was her Cinderella upbringing. It made her a tough person, wise and street-smart way beyond her years. Our nine- or ten-year-old? They never would have made it.”

Drained, I stopped the tape at the end, and opened the large dark blue police case file next to the tape recorder. In it was a Suffolk County Police report dated January 14, 1993.

Katherine in her statement describes the room in which she was secreted. She also stated that during this time, John touched her vagina. Sometimes he touched her over her clothes, sometimes under. This happened when John came down to give her food. Katherine stated that she was chained and handcuffed in this room. This began after the police arrived to search the house. Katherine states she began banging on the ceiling hoping the police would find her. There was a monitor for a closed circuit camera in the secret room so Katherine could see what was going on outside. Katherine went on to say that on 1/10/93 at night John brought her a newspaper. He also promised her 5,000 dollars so she could spend it when he let her go. On Monday he gave her 500 dollars and told her he would give her 500 dollars every other day. On Tuesday 1/12 Katherine told John she was sick and she needed a doctor. He said he couldn’t get her a doctor right now. He later told her he was going to hang himself and pin a note to himself telling the police where to find her.

Subsequently, Katherine was freed on 1/13/93.

Upon rescue, the report concluded, Katie exploded with glee exclaiming, “
I’m going home? I’m going home!”

I know there will never be
full
recovery for me. But somehow the act of telling the story, revealing the pain that I endured as a child, helps me live with it today. Because I think that letting people know what really happened to me makes good come from bad. Maybe people in similar situations will gain the courage to come forward. This is why, in October of 2007, I finally told the whole truth to New York State Division of Parole.

John Esposito becomes eligible for parole every two years. When he had served the minimum fifteen years, I travelled with my parents to a hearing in New York City. We were in a conference room with one female commissioner and a stenographer. We all sat at one end of a long table, and now, as a young adult, I was able to deliver a victim’s impact statement
³⁸

and say what I had never before uttered publicly.

Looking back on it, I wish that it had gone to trial, because I really think with what he did he deserved a harsher sentence rather than just fifteen years. Over the course of the sixteen days, I was abducted; I never thought I was going to get out. He had a video camera and a TV installed so he could see if anybody was coming into his house while he held me captive. I watched the news every single day and that was just pure torture. To see them speculating where they were searching, wondering if I was alive. He would come down at least once a day and either molest or rape me. At least once a day, for the time that I was down there. Then he would just talk to me like nothing had happened. And I would ask him what I was going to do about school. What was I going to do when I was older? Was I going to work? He would always reassure me, telling me that I would be happy when I was eighteen, when I was older and nobody was looking for me anymore. And he would keep me chained in there for twenty-three hours a day…. I don’t know why he chained my neck to the wall.
³⁹

My parents had their turn, arguing that it would never be safe to allow John to go free.

“Katie is a survivor,” my mother told the commissioner, “and she has a strong spirit and she has overcome her past. She has turned into a

BURIED MEMORIES

lovely young woman. But you have to understand at ten years old, the difficulty she had to overcome, the terror that she had in her life. It will never leave her, and she’ll have it the rest of her life.”

John was not at the hearing, but when he had his turn at Sing Sing Correctional Facility, he told the board his plan was only to take me for four days, then whisk me away to live happily ever after with him in Mexico or Australia, to rescue me from my miserable life, but everything went wrong.
⁴⁰
And he told the commissioners that he only chained me around the waist, because I was banging on the electrical box and he was concerned for my safety and that I would start an electrical fire.

The commissioners asked him, “...you didn’t have sexual intercourse with her?”

“No. I’m asexual. I can’t—I don’t have sex.” “Did you kiss her?” “I didn’t do it for sex.” “Where? On the lips?” “On the face, sometimes the lips.”

He told the board he let me go, in the end, because I spilled a soda can on the mattress and he didn’t want me to get wet. He made it sound like a hapless camping trip.

And then John pleaded for his freedom.
“I’m very sorry for what I’ve done. Believe me; I know how horrible it was for Katie after also being locked up. I have been locked in a facility almost fifteen years not knowing if I will ever go home, thinking I will never be with my family again. I know how Katie must have felt. It must have been much worse. She was just a little girl. Most of the time she was alone…I know how selfish I was...Believe me, if I could go back and know what I know now, it would never happen, never would enter my mind. I don’t know if I deserve to go home. If you give me one chance I know I will not let you down. You can make the rules of my parole very strict, take away my license for life, give me a lifetime curfew, put one of those things on the leg that tells you where I am at all times, give me programs that last for life. If you feel it is necessary, you can castrate me. Whatever you want, I will do at my own cost. For some reason, if I fail you can lock me up and throw away the key. This is how sure I am I will be a good and caring person if released
.”

Parole was denied. In a report mailed to me, the board wrote that releasing him would be “incompatible with the welfare of society and deprecate the serious nature of the crime against” me.

Two years later, when John was sixty years old, I read in the transcript of his next parole hearing that he continued to deny any sexual contact with me. In 2011, he stated to the parole board that his plan was to raise me as his own daughter.
⁴¹

“You are saying there was no sexual contact?” “There was no sexual contact.” “So why would she say that? If you are her rescuer, taking her out of her terrible circumstances and trying to raise her as a kind father, why would that person turn around and say that you touched her?”

“I believe that she said that I kissed her, and I did. But it was not sexual.”

Forgiveness is a luxury reserved for those who admit their mistakes. I knew that John was sick, and maybe, in his own way, he was looking out for my best interests, but now, I don’t feel that he deserves my forgiveness and I don’t believe that pedophiles can be cured or rehabilitated.

Again, John asked for freedom.
“I’d just like to say I am not the same person I was when I first came to prison. I am a much more social person, a much more humble person, a much more caring person, a much more religious person. I’m less self-centered. I know what I do will affect others, so I think more, much more, before I act. As for my prison record, since coming here, the first year I got my G.ED. I’ve been a teacher’s aide…I have learned much more about carpentry. I got six titles in drafting. I learned to play a musical instrument, which I can cite music fluently now. I play my instrument in church. I have learned that music can take away the loneliness and make me happy. Also, I have been very good in prison…Each quarterly report I get is excellent. Also whatever programs that my counselor told me to take, I did. I have not refused any programs. I have completed everything they wanted me to take. My time in prison has been consistent right from the start. If I do make a mistake, I try to never do it again. I never disrespect any office [sic], inmates or civilians. I am very sorry. What I did was very selfish, and I believe I have been punished enough. I am prepared to be free and I know I can be a plus to society.”

The commissioner congratulated John on a well-prepared statement and a few days later, denied his parole, ruling that his release “remains incompatible with public safety.”

As I looked through the transcript, I did find something John said to the parole board that may have actually been true.

“The last thing Katie said to me, and it’s a fact, my lawyer was there, is: ‘John, don’t worry. Everything is going to be okay.”

On that point and that point alone, John was right. I am, somehow, okay.

On the car ride home from delivering my impact statement to the Parole Board, I finally mustered the courage to inform my parents that I wanted to share my story publicly—in a book. My mother, of course, played devil’s advocate and wanted to know my justification for it. I told her I want to tell my story to set the record, finally, straight. Why should John’s lies stand unchallenged? I also wanted to warn parents and other adults that children aren’t going to tell them things when their lives are being threatened. They need to open their eyes and speak up when they suspect a child is in danger. In my case, predators were circling in and around me, and no one helped. I wanted the thirty-year-old rape victim to know they have to talk to someone. I wanted to let children of abuse know that it isn’t their fault and they didn’t ask for it.

I grew up way before my time. The abuse that I endured as a child stripped me of my childhood. Because of this, I will not live the type of life that other adults have the chance to live. I try to have a positive outlook on things, I believe that everything happens for a reason, that God doesn’t give you more than you can handle, and most importantly, what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger. Yet, it still astounds me that every single adult in my young life stole a piece of my childhood from me in one way or another.

It was around this time that I learned that audio tapes existed of my days in captivity. I was uninterested and adamant. I don’t want them ever to be played or heard publicly. I don’t want to hear the fear that I experienced. I don’t want to ever hear John’s voice again. I blocked out much of what happened in the dungeon to help in my recovery. I still remember a lot of it, but for endless hours, I was by myself. I am sure that I talked to myself and cried to myself and tried to comfort myself. I have no
desire to relive that trauma. But I was equally adamant that I wanted others to know, others to bear witness, so that the whole truth is indisputable.

It was Mary who called in February of 2009 and left me a short but stunning voicemail. I saved the message. Someone from the DA’s office had called her and let her know.

Sal was dead. I immediately called my parents. My mom’s reaction was a sarcastic “boo hoo.” That is a death that none of us is going to mourn. Then I called Marilyn. I wanted to let her know, but I also wanted to make sure she didn’t talk to the news reporters if they came calling, as I was sure they would. I didn’t want a return trip to the headlines. She was at work so it wasn’t an easy conversation. She received and digested the news during the three minute call while she manned the dispatch desk at Sunset Taxi, yelling orders into a two-way radio.

I asked, “Guess who passed away this morning in jail?”

There was a pause. She had no idea. “One of the guys I put behind bars.” “SAL?”

I think in the back of her mind, she’d been worried about Sal getting out and threatening one of us. She said simply, “That’s great.” I wanted to get her off the phone as quickly as possible. She never really talked to me like a mother. Not that I treat her as a mother. I think she said, “Now the bastard can rot in hell.” It was something along those lines. She was relieved. My entire foster family was as well. I felt no sadness. I always hoped someone would kill him in jail. I was actually quite surprised no one did.

I was happy because I knew now that he could never do what he did to me to anyone else. I learned that, prior to his death, he was living in North Carolina with a girlfriend who had a small child. My heart sank. I was disgusted that a woman would let a convicted pedophile into her home and into her life with a child in the house, after what he did to me. He never admitted it though. Always said I was a liar.

I think if he had shown remorse for what he did to me and how he treated me, I would have felt differently. John publically apologized for what he did, at least for the kidnapping. Now I’m the one keeping John a prisoner.

Sal was the type of man who thought he could do no wrong. He thought he could get away with anything. I used to believe he was just an evil man who liked to do evil things. Now I know that abuse can be a learned behavior. Sexual, verbal, physical and emotional abuse are acts that deeply scar a child who may later act out what they learned. When Sal was younger, abuse wasn’t recognized or treated. He got first hand schooling in the subject and repeated the cycle of abuse. I don’t think one day you just start abusing a two-year-old. With Sal, he told me that his dad abused him both verbally and physically. So he just went to another extreme.