Lori Fluegel watches the young girl walk across the courtroom &#8212; pink shirt, denim skirt, all lanky knees and elbows and bobbed blond hair pulled back from her face.</p><p>For much of the May afternoon the court heard the details of Jessica&#8217;s life of squalor and abuse, and of the alleged rape by David Brake, her dead mother&#8217;s onetime boyfriend.</p><p>She now settles into the witness chair, and if she&#8217;s able, will tell the story herself.</p><p>&#8220;Jessica, can you please state your name?&#8221; Fluegel asks.</p><p>She does, politely, hands in her lap and hiding a bit inside her own shoulders, like a schoolgirl asked to answer questions in front of the principal.</p><p>&#8220;And how old are you?&#8221; Fluegel asks.</p><p>&#8220;Twelve,&#8221; Jessica says. Right now, she seems composed.</p><p>The assistant Jackson County prosecutor is glad. She&#8217;s glad, too, about the way Jessica seems to sound and behave even more childlike than her age. All too often, it&#8217;s not that way with young children who have been sexually abused. Fluegel has known them to become hard, obstinate and defiant as teenagers. In court, they cop attitudes on the witness stand. Juries turn against them. Cases fall apart.</p><p>Fluegel had one that still haunts her: A woman meets an old high school friend who needs a place to stay for the night. She invites him over. The guy rapes the woman&#8217;s 12-year-old daughter in the middle of the night. But, at trial, the defense claims that the guy didn&#8217;t rape anyone. He was sleeping, they said. He awoke only <em>after</em> the girl had climbed on top of him and began having sex. By the time the case came to trial, the girl was a teen. On the witness stand, she was difficult and defensive. The guy was found not guilty.</p><p>Now, if Jessica can stay steady, Fluegel thinks, the jury will believe.</p><p>&#8220;So do you have a birthday coming up?&#8221; Fluegel asks</p><p>&#8220;Uh-huh,&#8221; Jessica says. July 10. She will be 13.</p><p>Quickly, Fluegel moves to Jessica&#8217;s memories of her grandmother&#8217;s house and all the people who lived there: her mother, three brothers, her grandparents and David Brake.</p><p>Even when Jessica entered the court, Brake did not look at her. He stays in his posture, looking at nothing other than his legal pad.</p><p>&#8220;Do you see him in the courtroom today?&#8221; Fluegel asks.</p><p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; Jessica says.</p><p>&#8220;And can you point to him?&#8221;</p><p>Brake, for the first time, looks up. She points and, when asked, describes his clothes: blue jeans, blue shirt and boots.</p><p>&#8220;And while you were living there&#8221; at your grandmother&#8217;s home, Fluegel says, &#8220;was there ever a time that David Brake touched you in a way that you didn&#8217;t like?&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; Jessica says.</p><p>&#8220;Can you tell me about that?&#8221;</p><p>She does: The jurors listen. Nobody was home, she says in a quiet voice. David arrived home from his job at Wal-Mart. She was watching &#8220;Harry Potter.&#8221; He told her to go upstairs. She didn&#8217;t listen. He yelled, so she went.</p><p>&#8220;And then he told me to lay on the bed,&#8221; she testifies, &#8220;and then he put his private part in mine.&#8221;</p><p>Only thing is, Fluegel knows, some of Jessica&#8217;s story is wrong. It has been three years. Some of the details have changed from the first time she first disclosed the story when she was 10 years old.</p><p>No one home? Her mother supposedly was home, passed out from either drugs or alcohol or both. And it&#8217;s different, too, from the sworn deposition she gave only five days ago to the defense lawyer, Curt Winegarner.