There was no pandemic, but there was pain and suffering. And for eight years, two young sisters who were raped by a relative two generations their elder were in mental and emotional lockdown.

Their abuser, 62 years old at the time of his conviction, would be sentenced to two 25-year prison terms for his crimes.

The victims would testify in court that they feared the older relative and that is why they remained silent so long.

Police, advocates say domestic violence cases on rise during COVID-19

The older sister, 18 at the time of the 2014 trial and 10 when the abuse started, testified that the older relative beat her.

The younger sister, 14 at the time of her testimony and just 6 at the time the abuse began, said he held a gun to her head.

So, they said nothing …

For eight years, when they were going to school every day.

For eight years, before they finally took the risk and told a female relative.

Shelby County Assistant District Attorney Eric Christensen, who prosecuted the case and leads the Special Victims Unit, knows why they waited. So he can’t help but wonder how many children are waiting now during the pandemic when, for many, there are no schoolteachers, counselors or coaches, or even extended family, to notice something is wrong.

“These girls did not reveal what was happening to them,” Christensen said, “until they got a safe opportunity.”

Numbers don’t tell full story

So, no, the fact that reports of child abuse and child sexual abuse were down during the early days of the pandemic here didn’t mean much to Shelby County District Attorney Amy Weirich.

“We’re not naïve enough to think that it’s not occurring,” she said. “Kids aren’t in school so it’s not being reported. And if you suspect a child is being abuse or neglected, you have a duty under the law to report it.”

The Domestic Violence Unit in the DA’s office also saw a dip in cases in the pandemic’s first few weeks. Soon, however, they were right back to their usual 500 to 600 cases per month.

After having 6,031 “intimate partner” cases in 2019, the total for 2020 intimate partner cases dropped to 5,691 because of the lower numbers last March and April, says Marianne Bell, an assistant prosecutor in the DVU.

There are also, on average, an additional 2,000 domestic violence cases each year not involving intimate partners. Bell mentions a recent case involving a father and son arguing over property: “The son shot him in the back and now the father is in the hospital fighting for his life.”

It’s the kind of thing that was all too common in 2020.

“I saw an increase in the severity of the violence,” Bell said. “I’m getting a lot more aggravated assaults and shootings and kidnappings where the victim is being held in the house or taken in a car. It’s pretty disturbing. In Order of Protection Court, harassment and stalking have ramped up.”

In both the Special Victims and Domestic Violence units, it’s not unusual for these cases to have long lifespans.

The pandemic within the pandemic: An explosion of domestic violence

That victim who was 6 when her abuse started and 14 when she testified? Assistant DA Lessie Rainey of the Special Victims Unit attended her middle school graduation. The prosecutors, for a time, became a huge part of the victims’ lives.

“So many kids, or even women, wait years before they tell anybody,” Rainey said.

The pandemic has caused delays across the full spectrum of criminal cases — there hasn’t been a jury trial in Shelby County since March — but SVU prosecutors are used to the time lag. They had met with the two sisters more than a dozen times to prepare them for testifying an open court, helping them to “gear up,” as Christensen put it.

The man convicted of raping them, James Hawkins Sr., was alleged to also have sexually abused more than a dozen other young family members. But the two cases that were prosecuted, Christensen says, were the strongest.

And the two teenage girls who summoned the courage to testify with their abuser sitting a few feet away, were a huge part of that. By the time the girls took the stand, they had gone from barely being able to speak to prosecutors about school or the weather, to slowly unwinding what had been done to them, to detailing their terror and humiliation in a courtroom before strangers.

Christensen and his team were more than a little bit proud of the girls: “We knew them really well.”

Real danger, real help

Domestic violence prosecutor Marianne Bell knows the question that outsiders always have: Why doesn’t the woman just leave?

Bell ticks off several answers, all of which apply during the pandemic, and in some instances might be accentuated.

“There are a number of reasons. Money. Children. The relationship. Love. Religion. Hope for change. And one of the main ones, fear of the abuser. We know the danger increases dramatically when the victim leaves, or just left.

“About 60-70% of the homicides are when the victim is leaving or just left. I’ve heard victims say, ‘Better the devil I know than the devil I don’t know.’”

Though the total number of domestic violence cases went down from 2019 to 2020 (again, numbers fell dramatically during the lockdown), homicides still rose from 16 to 20.

Particularly troubling now? Bonds for domestic violence defendants are coming cheap.

“And there are more people who pick up multiple cases against the same victim,” said Greg Gilbert, who leads the domestic violence unit. “There’s not a lot of deterrent value now. Magistrates are trying to keep the jail population lower. Guys pick up a case, have got a $1,000 bond, pay $100, and they’re out.”

It just happened the other day and Bell heard from the victim: “He’s gonna kill me.”

The good news?

“Help is still available,” Bell said, noting they have access to multiple confidential, safe housing options for women. “I think there was a fear at the beginning of the pandemic, ‘What do I do? Who do I call?’”

One number to call: 901-249-7611. That’s the 24-hour crisis hotline at the Family Safety Center, where two-thirds of their clients placed in emergency housing from October-July in 2020 were bringing children with them.

In a recent report, The Family Safety Center said the pandemic’s effects were noticeable: “Clients seem to be more stressed; exhibit more anxiety; exhibit fear of being trapped (with their abuser).

“We believe this is a result of the many months of dealing with CDC safety protocols that promote social distancing and ‘safer at home strategies’, etc.

“Many clients indicate they have more limited options for safe sheltering away from their abuser.”

No guarantees

Besides all the new cases, there are all the old cases. As Weirich likes to say, the criminal justice system is “exhausting” under so-called normal conditions.

“We have 27 child homicides in our unit right now,” Christensen said. “We have some cases that are four, five, six years old. And we had many ready to go to trial right when the pandemic broke.”

Meanwhile, victims of rape and other sexual abuse cases are trying to gauge how much stamina they have for the process when the judicial finish line might be several years away.

“I’ve had several victims say they wanted to settle cases, and originally they didn’t,” Rainey said. “Before, they said, ‘I want this guy to get the max.’ But now they say, ‘I’m tired.’”

In fact, Christensen expects to hear this kind of thing over and over as time, and the case itself, wears victims and witnesses down as they wait for the pandemic to end and life to return to something that looks at least quasi-normal.

“I bet we have witness fatigue, victim fatigue. And we won’t know until we’re a couple of weeks before trial.”

Prosecutors also will be asking jurors to treat the facts of the case as though they are fresh, when in many cases they clearly won’t be.

“The jury may wonder,” Christensen said. “But we’re used to this.

“We handle all the cold cases,” he said, referencing the rape kits mishandled by law enforcement. “I just got a new one from 1998.”

There will be other challenges, too, when trials resume.

“When we start trying cases, jurors likely will have masks on, the defendant will be wearing a mask, the 5-year-old victim will be wearing a mask,” Christensen said.

And all of it, potentially, could put a successful prosecution at risk.

“We’re all concerned right now that this could be an issue on appeal because we’re using different procedures,” Rainey said. “I don’t want a super-delicate victim on the stand and two or three days into it discover our procedures don’t work.”

More cases, more stories

How many “intimate partner” domestic violence homicides could have been prevented?

It is an impossible question, of course, but prosecutor Greg Gilbert says: “What we need in society is more basic dispute resolution. It seems like we go from zero to 100 faster.”

Perhaps even more so if partners are essentially trapped together during the pandemic.

If absence makes the heart grow fonder, what does near-constant presence do?

“Some cases start with the most asinine arguments,” Bell said. “Over something with the house going wrong, the dog … I don’t want to say it’s laughable, but it is sad.

“And then they escalate. To strangulation. Pistol whipping. Or being dragged out of a house by their hair and put in a car.

“There may be many instances where some of this happens before it is ever reported to us. And then something happens — like a job furlough, and it all just builds.”

And it’s not just men killing women. In 2020, 50% of the intimate partner homicides were women killing men.

“Women are carrying guns more and they’re not afraid to use them,” Gilbert said.

But usually, it is the women and children most in danger.

From July through October last year, 85% of the Family Safety Center’s intakes were through law enforcement contacts. At least that data is trackable.

What prosecutor Eric Christensen worries about is all the children who might have stories to tell that he has heard too many times before, stories where that “safe opportunity” has not yet presented itself.

When the pandemic finally eases, he believes there will be many small voices ready to be heard.

“There’s going to be a lot of delayed disclosures once kids feel safe again,” he said. “It’s scary how many kids are locked in with abusers because they’re literally in a hostage situation.”