Yolanda's Crossing

 What do you want to eat?

I don't know.

Yolanda stares at the menu, lost. She can scarcely read or write in Spanish with the education of a second-grader. She has never chosen for herself. And now the 17-year-old sits at a suburban Chili's restaurant with Susana and her 10-year-old daughter, Alexis, puzzled by words like Awesome Blossom and Baby Back Ribs.

Susana, who met Yolanda about a week ago at the Mexican Consulate, orders for her. Alexis, rapt by Yolanda's baby and knowing little of her mother, peppers the table with awkward questions.

Where's her daddy? Does the baby look more like her daddy or her?

Delicately, Susana tells a small portion of Yolanda's history, of her six years of sexual abuse and her abduction from the village in southern Mexico into the United States and Dallas.

Alexis shrinks silent. The food comes, and Yolanda eats as if there will never be another meal.

It is late September 2004, less than a month after she escaped Juan to live with Cristina Santana and her children in Oak Cliff. Juan waits in jail, his fate undetermined.

Yolanda remains an illegal immigrant, an exile in a land she never chose.

She knows she cannot return to the village where both of their families live. She hopes to stay with Cristina until she turns 18 in July, then find an apartment, work and support the baby.

Susana has been helping move her case through the system. The day after dinner at Chili's, her phone rings.

There is a way for Yolanda to stay in America legally, a voice says.

On the line is Michelle Sáenz-Rodríguez, a prominent Dallas immigration attorney. Michelle has heard about the case from the district attorney's office and thinks she may be able to help. Since Yolanda is still a minor, she can get a green card if she is declared a ward of the state and a U.S. citizen takes custody of her. But they must move fast. Much of it has to happen before she turns 18.

Otherwise, they could try to get her a special visa created by Congress for victims of crime in 2000 under the Violence Against Women Act. The visas were intended to move vulnerable immigrants out of the shadows and help authorities investigate and prosecute crimes, including rape and torture. But none has been handed out, and rules on how to administer them have never been published. At best, Yolanda could get temporary help.

It's not until that night that Susana thinks of taking custody of her. She is a single mother, once divorced, living with her sister and pulling down $36,000 a year. She doesn't have a car payment. Her days of living with abusive and drugged-out men are over. Her relationship with Alexis is strong.

Yet she knows everyone would criticize taking in a girl she barely knows, a girl with the tangled psyche of a rape victim. It could cost her job at the Mexican Consulate, a job that's already strained. It would mean getting her own place and putting off law school.

Susana lets nobody into her head that night: not her daughter or mother or best friend whom she has known since junior high school.

She thinks about the dozens of people who failed to stand up for Yolanda in Mexico and the United States. Dozens of strangers and family members who knew but stayed silent.

She prays and she sleeps. She says she talks with God. When she wakes, her mind is resolute and she picks up the phone.

What would you think about coming to live with me? she asks Yolanda.

Are you serious? Are you playing?

You would have to leave Cristina and come to Arlington.

Yolanda needs to think about it.

She has no idea where her father is. Drunk somewhere, she believes. She still has a sister and brother in Oaxaca, but she knows little of their fate. Cristina remains illegal and unable to provide Yolanda the opportunities a citizen can.

Susana finds an apartment in Arlington, and Yolanda moves in before Thanksgiving. For Christmas, Susana goes to the dollar store and buys as many gifts as she can afford, wrapping them and putting them under a tree. Yolanda has never opened presents.

And she has never had a room of her own. She looks outside at the apartment swimming pool, the first snow, the Hispanic construction workers.

She watches Mexican soap operas and cooks. Slowly, all the pain begins to rise. She says she feels like a squeezed tomato. Yolanda writes pages of memories in chicken-scratch Spanish. Then rips them apart, crumples them up and throws them in a trash can. Pain and anger.

This [expletive] man did so much harm to me, I'll never forgive him , she told a consulate employee shortly after her escape. He's a dog, a damned dog.

On some nights, Susana wakes to Yolanda's sobs in the adjacent room. She asks her what's wrong, but Yolanda just says her stomach hurts.

Other times Susana wakes to find all the cabinets in the apartment open. Bathroom drawers, kitchen cabinets, closets. Everything is open while Yolanda's door is locked.

Then there is the baby. Susana is concerned with Yolanda's mothering skills – not enough to alert Child Protective Services, but she is concerned nonetheless. When Yolanda is frustrated, she shakes Aidelin. When Alexis sees it, she yells at Yolanda and takes the baby away. Alexis' mothering skills can seem more evolved.

Susana begins to think she may have been naïve. Nothing is easy.

At the district attorney's office, Lara Peirce has been assigned to try Juan's case in front of state District Judge Manny Álvarez.

In the winter, when the 32-year-old prosecutor first reads the police report – with its one-paragraph narrative of Yolanda's story – she calls his public defender and offers his client 20 years. Juan turns it down.

She brings Susana and Yolanda into the office. They talk for hours.

I need to know where he touched. What he did. How it felt. What did you feel? What were you thinking?

By the end, Lara would say this is the worst case she has seen, worse than the kid who was tortured by his dad and the dozens of child abuse stories that have come through her hands.

She scribbles on her legal pad:

Twenty years definitely not enough.

But she worries whether a jury will think it's too grotesque to be true. Most witnesses are in Mexico. Those who shared the apartment with Yolanda and Juan in Dallas have been deported.

She offers 50 years. Rejected.

A trial appears inevitable. They will try Juan on sexual assault and aggravated sexual assault for threats he made to harm or kill Yolanda to ensure her silence.

To prepare, Yolanda and Susana visit a mock court where prosecutors prepare child victims for the rigors of the courtroom. Yolanda wears a judge's robe and holds a gavel. She meets a woman from Oaxaca whose daughter was abused. Slowly, she becomes more confident.

Then in the spring of 2005, Lara gets a surprise.

Juan will plead guilty, his attorney says. He will let a judge decide his sentence.

On April 5, 2005 – about two weeks before Juan's sentencing – Susana appears in a Tarrant County court to gain custody of Yolanda.

In an eight-page ruling, the court determines that Yolanda's father abandoned her as a child and failed to protect her from abuse and neglect by family members.

The judge makes Susana sole conservator, opening the door for Yolanda to gain residency in the coming months.

One hurdle crossed.

At home in Arlington, the family prepares for criminal court.

Susana wants Yolanda to look childlike and innocent at Juan's sentencing. Nothing sleeveless. Minimal makeup. Juvenile. They go shopping at Old Navy and pick out a white dress, simple and girly.

On the morning of April 22, she wears it to the courthouse.

Juan, 45, is led into the courtroom in his jail jumpsuit. Susana has never seen him. Short, old, disgusting, she thinks as the stories Yolanda has told her run through her head. Yolanda follows the advice of prosecutors and avoids eye contact.

She takes the witness stand, and Lara begins.

They start at the beginning, with the rape by the river, the threats and her cousin's bloody face. Yolanda is nervous, her voice quiet and unsteady.

I was sitting down, and I told him that I didn't want him to continue doing that anymore. ... That's when he pulled me by my hair, and he told me to get on the bed. And then he started taking my clothes off...

Judge Álvarez cuts it off, and asks Lara to approach the bench. Move on, is the message she hears.

Lara doesn't know what it means, but thinks Judge Álvarez has already made up his mind. Yolanda tells the court about coming to the U.S., about the baby and about her fears.

The prosecutor rests. Yolanda endures a brief and gentle cross-examination. Juan takes the stand.

OK. What were you thinking? asks his attorney Russ Henrichs. Were you hoping that she would stay with you and marry you?

No. I think I was mistaken. I thought she loved me, Juan says.

You thought she loved you?

Yes.

Susana thinks she hears the courtroom gasp. Lara waives her cross-examination and begins closing arguments. She explains the loss of childhood, the captivity, the kidnapping.

When you look at the kind of cases we see down here, this is the most egregious of the cases that we see. It's not a murder, but, in some ways, it's worse ...

There is no mercy that should be given to him.

Lara sits and Judge Álvarez tells Juan to stand up.

Maximum sentences. Life in prison plus 20 years.

Yolanda does not understand. She sees Susana crying and thinks he has gotten off light. Then she learns of the judgment.

Le dieron una vida. He got life, Susana tells her.

It is an emotion for which there is no single word. Part relief, part vindication, part joy. Tinged with thoughts of God and destiny.

For Susana, it is closure. For Yolanda, it is empowerment.