A stepfather has seemingly unfettered access to his three young stepchildren—both during his relationship with their mother and long after she leaves him. But when one of the children bravely discloses that she’s been sexually abused, a disturbing truth begins to surface.
Deputy Alia answers the call and works relentlessly to bring the suspect to justice, only to find herself up against the harsh realities of a legal system that doesn’t always work the way we want it to.
Deputy Alia has served with her agency for just over 10 years. She spent about 8 years on patrol, five of those as a field training deputy. The last two years she has spent in the training division where she is responsible for cadet training in the academy and agency training as a whole. Alia has also been a negotiator for the last four years, and is on call 24/7 for hostage/barricaded subject calls.
For bonus episodes, behind-the-scenes shenanigans, join the SuperFam community at smalltowndicks.com/superfam
Read TranscriptYeardley: Hey, Small Town Fam. It’s Yeardley. How are you guys? I hope you’re well. I’m so glad you’re here. The case we’re talking about today is a sex abuse case from new fan favorite deputy Aaliyah. And I just want to warn you that it’s probably going to piss you off and not just because the crime is a parent’s worst nightmare. Not to mention the worst shame inducing breach of trust a victim can endure. I’ll explain. I often say that one of the things I’ve learned over 16 seasons of co-hosting this podcast is that when detectives are gathering evidence, the dots need to connect almost perfectly in order for justice to be served. Because the consequence of a guilty verdict can be prison. So, there’s no room for shortcuts or trying to force a narrative that isn’t supported by the facts even if the detective has a hunch that that’s the way things happened.
In today’s case, Deputy Aaliyah and her team do everything right. Their evidence is rock solid, the victim bravely forthcoming, the offender even makes some admissions. And yet the outcome was bullshit. Yeah, if I’m being blunt, and it left me with more questions than answers. But you decide. Here is Judas Kiss.
[music]Yeardley: Hi there, I’m Yeardley.
Dan: I’m Dan.
Dave: I’m Dave.
Paul: And I’m Paul.
Yeardley: And this is Small Town Dicks.
Dan: Dave and I are identical twins-
Dave: -And retired detectives from Small Town, USA.
Paul: And I’m a veteran cold case investigator who helped catch the Golden State Killer using a revolutionary DNA tool.
Dan: Between the three of us, we’ve investigated thousands of crimes, from petty theft to sexual assault, child abuse to murder.
[Small Town Dicks theme]Dave: Each case we cover is told by the detective who investigated it, offering a rare, personal account of how they solved the crime.
Paul: Names, places, and certain details have been changed to protect the privacy of victims and their families.
Dan: And although we’re aware that some of our listeners may be familiar with these cases, we ask you to please join us in continuing to protect the true identities of those involved-
Dave: –out of respect for what they’ve been through.
Unison: Thank you.
Yeardley: Today, on Small Town Dicks, my friends, Small Town Fam, you are ever so lucky because the A team is in the house. We have Detective Dan.
Dan: Hello, wife.
Yeardley: Oh, hello, husband. [laughs] We have Detective Dave.
Dave: In order of appearance, [Yeardley laughs] Dave, number two.
Dan: Number two in more ways than one.
Yeardley: You know you were number two when you guys were being born as twins.
Dave: Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. And Dan’s making bathroom jokes now.
Yeardley: Yeah, because what is he, seven? I love him so much.
Dave: He’s six minutes older than me.
[laughter]Yeardley: Meanwhile, Paul is going like, “What the fuck, lady?” [Paul laughs] And we have the one and only Paul Holes.
Paul: Hey.
[laughter]Paul: I mean, what. How am I supposed to respond to any of that right there, huh?
[laughter]Yeardley: I am just happy you are here. That you didn’t hang up your headphones and go, “I’m out. Fuck it. Forget it.” And Small Town Fam, we are so excited. I told you she was going to be one of your new fan favorites. And she is, and she’s back. We have deputy Aaliyah.
Aaliyah: Hi. So, happy to be back.
Yeardley: We are so happy to have you. I feel like you and your sister Bre, you’re the dynamic duo.
Aaliyah: [laughs]We try our best.
Yeardley: It’s so great. And for years, actually, we had none or almost no female law enforcement on the pod. You all are hard to come by. And law enforcement being a squirrely bunch to begin with, I totally get it. [Aaliyah laughs] So, I feel like we really hit the jackpot with you guys. So, thank you.
Aaliyah: Thank you. We are both very happy to be here.
Yeardley: It’s awesome. So, Aaliyah, you know the drill. Tell us how this case came to you.
Aaliyah: Okay. So, I was working day shift. I was a pretty seasoned field training officer at the time. I had a recruit at the time.
Yeardley: And what’s his name?
Aaliyah: So, that is deputy Scott, who I love him to death. He is now in the FBI. He’s doing great things, very smart, really ready to get after it. But at the time, he was a pretty difficult recruit, [Yeardley laughs] only because he was having a lot of trouble with report writing. So, he was giving me a little bit of a run for my money. I was trying to figure out how to properly teach him. At the time, I was working day shift and I was looking for anything that was a little bit more involved and a little bit more difficult to give him the exposure. So that’s where I was when this report came in. Mom calls my agency. Mom’s name is Faith.
It was learned the night before that her daughter Sophia had been sexually molested by her stepfather, Jack, since she was about 10 years old.
Yeardley: How old is Sophia now when you get this call?
Aaliyah: Sophia at the time, I believe she was 11. She was very close to 12. So, Mom, Faith met Jack in Hawaii, and I believe 2015, Jack is in the army. He’s a master sergeant in the army, and he was stationed in Hawaii, where they met. They became a couple. Jack gets placed in our jurisdiction, and Faith follows him. A little while after that, back to where we live. Faith has three children, including Sophia. Sophia has two siblings. She’s the oldest of three. So, Faith has custody of all three children. Sophia’s father’s not in the picture. And Jack and Faith move in together and become a family. They start a life together here. Jack and Faith end up ending their relationship a few months prior to our investigation.
Faith says that Jack stops wanting to have any sort of sexual intercourse with her, and she believes that he is cheating on her. And so, she ends the relationship with Jack. Faith then moves out of their house and she gets her own apartment. And all three children move with her to this new apartment.
Yeardley: How long were Jack and Faith together before Faith calls it off?
Aaliyah: They met in 2015 and this report happened in 2019. So, they were together quite a long time. These kids saw Jack as very much of a father figure in their lives, and they were very used to him. They were used to him being around. They were used to them being a family unit. Jack was their only model of a biological father. So, when Faith and Jack split, Jack continued to be a steady presence in the children’s lives.
Yeardley: It’s curious to me that Faith doesn’t feel like Jack is suitable for her because she suspects he’s cheating on her. But, okay, you can hang out with my kids. I want to sit her down for lunch and go, “Faith, listen, listen to me. It doesn’t have to be this way.”
Aaliyah: [laughs] Right. Right. We can find somebody better Faith.
Yeardley: Listen, you deserve more, right?
Dave: I’ve had cases like this where, lots of times I’ve seen where relationship ends, but the male or the female, depending, they still have a presence in the child’s life because they were an impactful, steady person in that child’s life. So, it happens all the time.
Aaliyah: Yeah. So, I think that Faith having three children and I have two boys of my own, so I understand that dynamic. It’s difficult, right? You’re trying to constantly figure out childcare and shifting them. And Faith worked and she went to school. So, Jack was an easy person who she believed was a safe person for her children because he knew them and he had spent a significant amount of time with them. And she believed that was a safe option for her kids. When she was at work and at school, he would come in and take over.
Yeardley: And those kids are young, so I’m sure in that very formative time, they really love Jack. Like, Jack seems like the guy.
Aaliyah: Absolutely. So, Faith continues to have this relationship with Jack that he is allowed access to the children. He watches them when she is at work. He watches them when she is busy doing schoolwork or going to school. And he helps her when she needs help because he’s a single man and he has no other responsibilities. He has no biological children of his own, and he really just has to go to work and come home. So, on the night before this report came in, the next day, Jack came over for dinner with the family and they had dinner together as a family, and Faith fell asleep on the couch. When Faith woke up maybe around like 11 o’clock at night, she goes to check on the children.
When she goes into Sophia’s room, Faith finds Jack in the bed with Sophia and she sees Jack rubbing Sophia’s thigh. So, she immediately asks him “What the heck he’s doing. Sophia’s a little girl, why are you laying in bed with her? Why are you rubbing her leg?” And Jack immediately becomes very defensive and says, “I was just touching the bed. I was not touching Sophia. There’s nothing going on. I was just snuggling her saying goodnight to her.”
Yeardley: Did Faith think that Jack had left?
Aaliyah: So, I believe that she was at that comfort level. She felt like she could fall asleep on the couch and the kids would be fine and he would just let himself out and there would be no issue, there’d be no questions. He could come and go as he pleased. So, Faith confronts Sophia in front of Jack and says, “What’s going on?” And Sophia basically discloses that Jack has been inappropriate with her for the last year and a half or so. And Faith tells Sophia to stay in the bedroom and brings Jack into the living room and confronts Jack about what’s been happening between him and Sophia. Jack denies any sort of sexual activity with Sophia and that conversation ends around like 1:30 in the morning. And Jack goes home to his house and Faith is there with her three kids, including Sophia, for the rest of the night.
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[Break 1]
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Aaliyah: The next morning, Faith wakes up, she has a further conversation with Sophia. And Sophia discloses a lot of things to Faith about what’s been going on between Sophia and Jack. So, after some of the disclosures, Faith calls our agency and wants to make a report. So, it’s interesting because my recruit at the time, Deputy Scott, knowing him and knowing the struggles that he was going through and knowing that this report was going to need a little bit more. I was like, “We’re going to this one,” because I wanted to see how he handled it also, like he handled the gravity of it. And then I wanted him to be able to put on paper what was happening.
So I told Deputy Scott, we need to go there. We need to have an open mind. We need to hear what Sophia has to say. Because there is a lot of times that things get blown out of proportion. Kids say things that they think their parents want to hear or they’re baited into a conversation that isn’t necessarily accurate. But we need to be open minded and we need to listen to what Sophia has to say. So, we go there and we start talking to Faith. And Faith is describing what had occurred the night before. And Faith makes a very interesting statement to me. And she says, “We broke up because I believed that Jack was cheating on me. I also believed that there was something going on between him and Sophia, but I didn’t have any proof of it.”
And I was like, okay, that gets my Spidey senses going. I’m like, “You as a mother, believe something is going on between Jack and Sophia. Like, you have that gut feeling. That’s a big red flag.”
Yeardley: Yeah, I agree. I mean, that Faith sits with this hunch that her husband is having a sexual relationship with her daughter. I don’t know how you don’t act on that hunch.
Aaliyah: Yes. So, I asked Faith to speak to Sophia privately, and Faith wanted to be in there, and Sophia wanted her in there while we were interviewing Sophia. So, I qualified Sophia. We have to qualify here in our state. We have to make sure that they know the difference between the truth and a lie. Sophia starts to describe to us what’s been going on between Sophia and Jack throughout the last year and a half to two years. Sophia starts to tell us that her and Jack were having a sexual relationship and he was actually penetrating her until Sophia started her period. And she made it very clear that he stopped having actual intercourse with her when she started her period.
Yeardley: As though that was like. That was a turn off. That was the end of his strike zone.
Dave: Of course, I’m getting way out in front here, but Yeardley mentioned strike zone. There comes a time where sex offenders go, “That person’s too old for me. I need to find another young one.”
Aaliyah: Sure. For sure. And I believe that would have been the case with Jack had he have stopped the sexual abuse once she got her period. But he continued it just in different ways. So, I think he thinks he’s going to get her pregnant.
Yeardley: Sure.
Aaliyah: Anytime that Faith was gone out of the house, they were having a sexual relationship. Sophia described daily that he was abusing her. At the time of my investigation, Faith was like, “I will do anything. I will take her anywhere. I want justice for Sophia.” And as a parent, I was like, absolutely. You know, but also as a parent, I’m like, “If you have this feeling in the back of your head that you are not listening to and you felt like this was going on, like, that is a little bothersome to me. So, I’m kind of, like, conflicted.
Yeardley: Yeah, it definitely raises more questions than it answers. But playing devil’s advocate here, just for the sake of argument, if Faith suspects that Jack is having an affair with another adult woman, that’s bad enough. But if Faith suspects he’s cheating on her with Sophia, that’s got to feel like an overwhelming betrayal. And I’m not putting any blame on Sophia for that. Not at all. That poor girl is 100% a victim. It’s just an unimaginable situation where I’m guessing the ripple effect probably felt like a tidal wave to Faith.
Aaliyah: Right. And that is where I feel like I was conflicted throughout dealing with Faith because I felt as if she was really in it to find justice for her daughter. But I also felt like there was some steps she could have taken prior to. But again, it is such a sticky area, because you’re going to accuse this man who is a master sergeant in the military. He’s got this rank. He has this connection with your kids. It’s a very weird dynamic.
Yeardley: It’s a big apple cart to upset.
Aaliyah: It is. It is. So, I am talking to Sophia, and she is very shy, she’s very reserved, she’s very quiet. But she is telling me a lot of detail, and I’m asking her a lot of things. A lot of very uncomfortable things. She’s having a really, really uncomfortable conversation with me, my male recruit deputy Scott, and her mom, Faith, who was in the room. So, Sophia said that that night, Jack touched her inappropriately over her clothing, but made no penetration. And I think I’m speculating, but I think that is a lot to do with the mom waking up and interrupting what was going on. But he had the audacity to also touch Sophia. After dinner, Jack came up behind her and was kind of groping Sophia while she was doing the dishes, because Sophia did the dishes. That was her responsibility.
And Sophia told Jack to stop. So, Jack proceeds to wait until Faith falls asleep to then victimize Sophia in her own bed. So, I asked Sophia, “When is the last time that you and Jack had any sexual contact prior to last night?” And Sophia proceeds to tell me that Jack watched Sophia and her two siblings a weekend prior. And Jack took Sophia and the kids to Walmart, where Jack bought Sophia a pack of underwear and Jack bought Sophia bras. I asked Faith if Faith had asked Jack to provide these things for her, like, if she had said, “Hey, Sophia needs new underwear. Can you pick them up at Walmart?” And Faith said, “Absolutely not. I never asked him to pick those things up.”
So, Jack took Sophia and the kids back to his place, proceeded to tell Sophia to put on the bras and the panties that Jack bought at Walmart for her. After Sophia did that, then Jack exposed her to pornography on his laptop. The way that Sophia is describing all of this, I’m sitting there looking at her like, “I believe everything that you are telling me right now.” There was not a bone in my body that said Sophia was lying to me or that she had any reason to lie to me. The thing Sophia was describing was checking every single box that I have ever learned, ever experienced within my professional career to say Sophia is telling me the truth.
Sophia is describing the laptop that Jack is showing her this pornography on, and Jack is asking her to do the same thing that the female on the pornography is doing to herself. And Sophia refuses to imitate the female on this pornography. Sophia describes that Jack digitally penetrates her, and he also performs oral sex on Sophia. I asked Sophia “If she came home in the same underwear that she had on at Jack’s house and the same bra that he bought her.” And luckily enough, Sophia came home in that underwear. She never showered at Jack’s house that weekend. She came home in the underwear and bra and she changed at Faith’s house, at her mom’s house, and she put her dirty clothes in the hamper.
Yeardley: Hopefully, Faith has not done the laundry right away.
Aaliyah: I said, “Faith, thank [laughs] God you have not done the laundry yet.”
Yeardley: [laughs] Thank God for your overwhelm.
Aaliyah: Thank God. So, I was like, “We’re going to take the underwear and we’re going to take Sophia’s bra, and we’re going to impound those into evidence, see what we can get off of those.” And I was like, “Sophia, is there any way that you have the bag of underwear?” You know how children’s underwear come in a little bag? It’s like a six pack. So, I said, “Did Jack send those home with you?” And she said, “Yes.” So, I ended up taking the SKU off of the bag of underwear, and I was like, “Let me see what I can possibly do with this SKU.” So, I went to the closest Walmart to his house, and I had a really good relationship with the loss prevention there, because we’re always at Walmart taking shoplifters to jail. [Yeardley laughs] So luckily, I had a very good relationship.
And I said, “Can you run this SKU for me? And can you show me the times that this SKU has been purchased? And can we try to match up the video to this SKU from this bag?” And he was like, “Let me see.” So, he ran the SKU, and it had only been purchased a few times within the last couple weeks. So, we started looking through the video, and sure enough, we found Jack in the aisle picking out the underwear and the bras with Sophia and the other two children purchasing them. We have it all on video. We have the receipt with last four of his card number on the receipt. And I’m like, “Got you now.” [laughs] I was so excited. I was like, “I got you. You didn’t think I could probably find this, but I can.” Great.
I’m like, “I have video of you buying her this underwear, and then I have this underwear that she has not washed yet. I’m so excited. Right. I’m like, “I’m going to get you, buddy. I’m going to get you.”
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Aaliyah: So, I’m the deputy in this investigation, right? So, I am doing my best to do what I can do in the moment, but I am not the detective. My job is to write everything, to get all the evidence I can in that moment and pass it off, which hurts.
Yeardley: You must be so invested.
Paul: Yes.
Dave: I’ll say this. Most patrol officers and patrol deputies cannot wait to get a case like that off of their caseload. So, to find a patrol officer who’s like, “I’m totally invested. I’m into this. What do you need me to dig” that kind of stuff to corroborate Sophia’s information is enormous to the prosecutors, enormous.
Aaliyah: Yes. It was very difficult for me to just say, “Okay, Deputy Scott, we’re going to write this up really detailed, and we’re going to pass it off.” And then I’m sitting there like, “I have this deputy who’s really struggling in report writing, who’s really struggling investigations, and we need to give this justice. How are we going to do this?” Because I have to allow him the opportunity to try to write this and to try to hand it off. And so, we work together on it. Myself and deputy Scott get through the report. The report turns out, it’s a great report. He did a really, really good job, which I think built his confidence a lot, because this was definitely a more difficult report to articulate. And Deputy Scott really wanted to do a good job on it, and it ended up on Detective Josh’s desk.
Detective Josh is the detective that picked up the case on the back end. And a lot of people in my agency are not as lucky as I am as having the connection with my sister in those different departments. So, I can give her a call and be like, “Hey, I need you to look at this case. This case is really important. Can you let Detective Josh know that he needs to get this case to the front, because this is an important case.” Detective Josh ended up serving a search warrant on Jack’s residence. And Detective Josh found all of the things that Sophia had described in her original interview. Ultimately, the underwear that I collected during the original investigation were sent off for DNA testing, and the underwear and the bra came back positive for Jack’s saliva. His DNA was present on her underwear and his DNA was present on her bra.
Dave: And there’s a distinction there. It’s not skin cells. We’re talking about saliva. And, Jack, by way of making the purchase of these items has plausible deniability for why his DNA would be there. But now we have saliva, which is not skin cells by any means.
Paul: Right. So, these underwear in a package. So, even if he pulled them out and handed them to her to put on herself after a bath or something like that, but we’re talking about his saliva in her underwear. That’s pretty damning. So, eventually, Detective Josh ended up charging Jack with sexual battery on a victim less than 12, which is a capital felony in our state. During the investigation, it was also disclosed that pictures were taken of Sophia in different positions, unclothed, throughout Jack’s abuse of her. None of those pictures were on any of the devices that we were able to recover during the search warrants, so were not able to recover any of that. However, he was charged with several sexual battery counts, capital felonies. And after everything was said and done, Jack only received 12 months of probation.
Yeardley: What?
Aaliyah: Hmm-mm.
Dan: So, is that a plea deal?
Aaliyah: It was a plea deal. He pled no contest in pretrial, and he was given 12 months of probation, and his probation was terminated 12 months later, he served it with no issues.
Yeardley: Oh, my God. Does he have to register as a sex offender?
Aaliyah: No.
Yeardley: No. Aaliyah, stop that.
Dan: So, what did he actually plead to?
Aaliyah: He pled to the sexual battery. There was three charges of sexual battery. There was one charge of lewd and lascivious or enticing a victim under 12, the defendant’s over 18. And there was one charge of selling or distributing obscene material to a minor, probably the pornography that he was exposing her to. And he got 12 months. Doesn’t it make your blood boil?
Yeardley: Oh, my God.
Dave: There’s an aspect here that we’ve got the saliva evidence on underwear. And Jack’s defense attorney, I’m sure, was like, “Oh, that happened after she turned 12.” Like, if we’re going to go down for anything with this underwear, make sure that they know that this happened after Sophia turned 12. Because if it happened before, then we’re in totally different waters here.
Yeardley: I’m stunned, though, that it seems, as every state has certain age cutoffs. And as you were saying, “Aaliyah, if the victim is below 12 years old, that’s a capital offense.” So, Sophia was below 12 years old. How does Jack get 12 months’ probation? I just feel like I’ve been slapped around. I’m stunned.
Aaliyah: I felt the exact same way.
Paul: I had to look up the Florida sexual battery statute because sexual battery in California is a completely different level of sex crime. It’s in essence, in California, sexual battery is unwanted touching of the breast, the buttocks, genital area. And that can happen through clothes or underneath clothes. But in Florida looking this up, this is the heavy hitting sexual charge where you’re talking about penetration, female genitalia, anal, etc. So, I am shocked at this plea deal for that type of charge coupled with the physical evidence, that’s stunning to me as well.
Yeardley: Does Jack’s DNA from his saliva go into CODIS?
Aaliyah: Believe it does.
Yeardley: And Aliyah, you don’t know of any other hits?
Aaliyah: No.
Yeardley: []: No.
Paul: It’s so dependent or variable state by state, so in this case, you have a named suspect that the lab is being asked to compare that saliva to. In some states, if it remains a forensic unknown, it gets uploaded into CODIS, and that is how you could potentially find somebody like Jack having committed other crimes. However, I’m not sure how Florida labs handle that scenario where it’s like, compare this saliva to this suspect, and if they make a match, then that gets reported out. They may not upload that DNA profile from Sophia’s underwear up in CODIS because they’ve got a direct comparison. If this had occurred in California, then just him merely being arrested for this sexual battery offense on Sophia, he would be sampled and put up into CODIS.
And all of a sudden, now, if he’s got other victims out there, you potentially are matching him to other victims. I mean, Jack’s going to offend again. And it’s just unfortunate that if he’s not up in CODIS, you know, that’s somebody really screwed up in terms of this plea deal.
Aaliyah: Hmm-mm.
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Paul: So, Aaliyah, I don’t think you could have done anything different. I think you went up and beyond on this case. You know, having finished my career with the DA’s office, some of the things that I’ve seen prosecutors have to deal with. Let me give you, like, a hypothetical scenario with Jack and Sophia is that here lab ends up finding DNA evidence, critical for this case. Well, it turns out that the lab analyst has some Brady issues. Now the prosecutor is going, if I put this lab analyst on the stand, they’re going to be so discredited, I’m going to have this DNA evidence thrown out.
Yeardley: Right. And just for our listeners, Brady in law enforcement has to do with a no lies policy, meaning if an officer is caught lying during an investigation, they get what’s called Bradied, and basically their career’s over. Because in lying, you’ve now tainted the entire investigation and tarnished the agency.
Paul: Yeah, there could be something along those lines that may have forced the prosecutor’s hands to take such a ridiculous plea deal in such a strong case with such serious offenses. Still it’s so frustrating because we’re here for public safety and you do your job and yet you haven’t made the [laughs] public safer because the guy is back out on the street.
Yeardley: That’s devastating.
Dave: Like, what the fuck? [laughs]
Aaliyah: Yeah, it hurts. It really. It really hurts.
Paul: Dave, in your experience, a stepfather is convicted of a crime, serves time and comes out, how often does that stepfather come back into the victim’s life?
Dave: I’ll say this. I’ve had suspects confess to me and their wives about what they had done to daughter, stepdaughter, stepson, whatever. And those same fathers only had to sleep on the couch for a couple days, and then they were right back in the good graces. It’s the way it is. I have a hard time believing that Jack learned any useful lesson out of here other than saying, I got to better next time about grooming. I got to be better about when and where. I mean, this is an accidental disclosure. He got walked in on. He got interrupted. So, all I think is the close calls made them better. They got smarter, they got more calculated, and they either get more vicious or they get smarter about how they’re vicious.
Yeardley: Also, you think of Sophia, who is looking to the adults in her life to get her some justice and to be as vindicated as she can be after this amount of trauma and assault and to just be thoroughly let down by the system has to be devastating. And for Faith as well, who I’m sure was like, “Look, we did everything were supposed to do.” I’m sort of speechless.
Dan: It’s not much of an incentive to report sexual abuse.
Yeardley: No.
Aaliyah: No, it’s not. And it’s heartbreaking too, because Sophia was so brave in her statements in front of Jack, in her disclosures to me and my male partner at the time, to her disclosures to Detective Josh, like, she’s a little baby and she’s having the bravery, which I don’t think I would have had at her age, to come forth and describe these things and say these things, all of which have been validated, all of which there is evidence for. It’s heartbreaking. Even as the deputy responding, because, like, “I’m a mom, I’m a human,” and like, “I care about these people and I care about their lives.” And then it follows you. It does. It just. It plays on you forever. And you’re just like, “What could I have done differently? Could I have done more? Could I have served her better in some sort of capacity for the outcome to be different?”
But then there’s so many things that are just out of your control, unfortunately. Like, I guess that’s just how the cookie crumbles sometimes. But it’s hard to remove yourself, especially when you’re a parent. And I’m sorry, I’m getting emotional. It’s hard to remove yourself from, like, that could be my child. These are babies. These are innocents. How do we protect them? How do I sign up for this job that I signed up for to protect the victims, to protect the innocent, to protect the babies, to protect the people that cannot protect themselves. You’re asking yourself, like, what I could have done differently. You know, it still plagues you. By the end of a 35-year career, you’re like, [laughs] “How do you sleep at night?”
Yeardley: Well, they don’t. They don’t sleep much, I can tell you that. Not all of the cases we talk about on this podcast are tied up with a lovely, sweet bow. And thank God for you, Aaliyah and Deputy Scott for going the distance and doing what you could to get justice for Sophia. Sweet girl. Thank you.
Dave: Aaliyah, great work. A patrol response like that, to have that kind of detail is exceptional.
Aaliyah: Thank you.
Paul: Well, that’s what stands out to me, you know, and hearing Dave and Dan talk about how they handled their patrol duties and the follow up that they did. You line up with the exceptional work just like what they did. And from my perspective, I’ve seen such a huge spectrum of work across so many different agencies and to see extraordinary work is always great.
Aaliyah: Thank you very much.
Dan: It’s work like that, that gets you noticed. It’s like I used to tell younger officers when a position back in detectives opens up and now you just start showing your face around detectives. That to me is not you showing me that you want to be a detective. It’s your whole body of work from the minute you’ve been hired. And it’s cases like this that you helped put together, Aaliyah, that gets you a reputation in an agency where they say I know that person is thorough and knows what they’re doing. So great job.
[music]Aaliyah: Thank you very much.
Yeardley: Small Town Dicks was created by Detectives Dan and Dave. The podcast is produced by Jessica Halstead and me, Yeardley Smith. Our senior editor is Soren Begin and our editors are Christina Bracamontes and Erin Phelps. Our associate producers are the Real Nick Smitty and Erin Gaynor. Gary Scott is our executive producer, and Logan Heftel is our production manager. Our books are cooked and cats wrangled by Ben Cornwell. And our social media maven is Monika Scott. It would make our day if you became a member of our Small Town Fam by following us on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube at @smalltowndicks, we love hearing from you.
Oh, our groovy theme song was composed by John Forrest. Also, if you’d like to support the making of this podcast, go to smalltowndicks.com/superfam and hit that little join button. There, for a small subscription fee, you’ll find exclusive content you can’t get anywhere else.
The transcripts of this podcast are thanks to SpeechDocs and they can be found on our website, smalltowndicks.com. Thank you SpeechDocs for this wonderful service. Small Town Dicks is an Audio 99 Production. Small Town Fam, thanks for listening.
Nobody is better than you.
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