Part Sixteen: Nita

Renata Gaddis testified against her father twice — once before a grand jury in the March and once at a pretrial hearing in the September — and she was sixteen and seventeen when she did it.

There is no witness protection program for a teenager in a county assault case.

That is an invention and it does real harm, because it lets people believe there is a mechanism when there is not one.

What there is, is a victim assistance coordinator, a protective order that a judge will sign, and whatever the adults around the child manage to arrange themselves.