-27-
to return him to his mother’s house if his grades did not improve. The
next morning, defendant had run away, taking $2 for bus fare out of
nearly $3,000 Kathy kept above the refrigerator.
Kathy wrote that the reason she was not attending court in person
was that she feared gang retaliation against herself or other family
members.
DeSloover also presented a statement written by Nancy Baez,
another sister of Delores. Nancy wrote that when Delores became
pregnant at 12½ years old, Delores and Rosas ran away to Mexico to
live with Rosas’s father. Rosas beat Delores, however, and his father
bought Delores a bus ticket for her to return to Chicago. When she
arrived, she was sick and dehydrated and required hospitalization.
Soon after that, Antoinette was born prematurely.
Like Kathy, Nancy reported that Rosas was abusive toward
Delores and the children. Nancy stated that her brother, Kimbow,
often stood up to Rosas and threatened him to get him to stop abusing
Delores and the children, but when Kimbow died in 1979 the abuse
worsened.
When Rosas was incarcerated, Delores became involved with
Pasarro. According to Nancy, Pasarro was very controlling. She also
recounted the kidnapping incident. Nancy wrote that Pasarro
continued to beat Delores and the children after he moved in with
them in Grand Rapids. According to Nancy, Pasarro would lock the
children in their rooms for weeks at a time during the summer. Nancy
also stated that she was not appearing in court because she feared
retaliation.
On cross-examination, DeSloover repeated her earlier testimony
that Delores and Pasarro had been seeing each other for 13 or 14
years, and Genarro was 25 years old at the time of the hearing. She
would not agree, however, that it was “impossible” for Genarro to
remember standing in the snow with Pasarro at age three. DeSloover
also testified that Delores did not have black eyes or bruises when
DeSloover saw her, and that nobody except Genarro had reported that
Pasarro made defendant kneel on bottlecaps. She also acknowledged
that defendant’s mother had appeared in court to ask for a reduction
of defendant’s bond, and she had assured the court that she could
control defendant. The State also showed DeSloover a report written
