http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/01/nyregion/woman-in-brooklyn-rape-case-confided-in-professor.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Brooklyn%20rape&st=cse Student’s Shocking Revelation to a Professor
By LIZ ROBBINS
Published: June 30, 2011
Jeffrey T. Kern had been impressed with the quiet young woman from Brooklyn, a businesslike student who always sat in the back of his class on courtroom communication at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
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Robert Stolarik for The New York Times
Helen Ellington, grandmother of Damien Crooks, one of four men charged in a Brooklyn rape case, and Mr. Crooks's brother Joel Crooks discussed the charges on Thursday.
She was, Mr. Kern said on Thursday, “a little bit above the fray, and when she did speak, it carried more weight.”
One day after class, the student spoke to Mr. Kern, a former prosecutor with the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, and told him something shocking. She revealed some details of what she said had happened to her repeatedly since she was 13: she had been raped near where she lived in Crown Heights, and forced into prostitution.
Over a series of conversations, the woman confided in her professor, a no-nonsense trial lawyer with a buzz cut and a sensitive ear who taught the art of persuasion. Mr. Kern, an adjunct professor at John Jay since 1994, carefully suggested that she speak to the authorities; he knew she was reluctant out of fear for her safety and that of her family.
He impressed upon her the need to take care of herself before looking after others, referring to the psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
The woman immediately nodded and said, of course, she knew all about Maslow.
“She is real bright,” Mr. Kern said. “She is wise beyond her years.”
On Wednesday, more than 18 months after that initial 90-minute conversation, the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, announced the indictment of four men in a case that prosecutors say had been going on for nearly a decade.
The authorities charged Damien Crooks, 31, with four counts of rape and two counts of sex trafficking. Jamali Brockett, 27, was charged with rape and compelling prostitution. His brother, Jawara Brockett, 33, and a fourth defendant, Darrell Dula, 24, were charged with rape.
Bail was set at $1 million for Mr. Crooks, who has eight prior convictions going back to 1996 and served 18 months for attempted criminal possession of a weapon in 2000. Bail for Mr. Dula was set at $50,000. The Brocketts are in federal custody in connection with another case.
In Crown Heights, neighbors of the defendants said they had often seen the woman in the area, at times with Mr. Crooks, at times with other people and at times on her own.
“I thought she had a lot of love for everybody, especially Damien,” said Brittny Ellington, 21, a niece of Mr. Crooks.
A brother of Mr. Crooks, Joel Crooks, 35, said police officers arrested him on Tuesday and then realized he was not Damien. Mr. Crooks said that he and other family members persuaded his brother to turn himself in. “He’s getting railroaded right now,” Mr. Crooks said, adding that he did not believe his brother was guilty of the charges.
The woman was under the age of consent while some of the reported sexual contact was occurring. Mr. Kern, her professor, said she was “fully integrated” into Damien Crooks’s life. “And that’s the problem,” he added, saying that breaking away from his influence was hard for her.
The indictment charges that Mr. Crooks and Jamali Brockett first met the woman in 2003, when she was 13, and they both raped her in a neighborhood park. The two then began forcing her to have sex for money; they beat her, raped her and intimidated her, the indictment says.
Prosecutors said on Wednesday that about a year and a half ago, the attackers threatened to harm a member of her family if she went to the police. It was around that time that she began opening up to Mr. Kern.
“I was thinking at the time that her ultimate salvation would not be in some courtroom at 320 Jay Street, but it would be in getting out from underneath his spell,” he said, referring to Mr. Crooks.
Mr. Kern said he spoke several times on his own to the police and the district attorney’s office and helped her understand the criminal justice system to make her feel more comfortable to approach the authorities herself. He said he did not know whether her personal experience had influenced her decision to attend a criminal justice college.
Mr. Kern, 49, who is special counsel at Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton in its white-collar and business trial practices, called the indictment “a watershed moment,” but cautioned that in the case, the “hard work is still to come.”
Colin Moynihan contributed reporting.
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