Nov. 21, 2011
Raymond Lawrence, the New York City chaplain who founded the Committee for Support of the Edenton Seven, was an attentive and often appalled observer at Bob Kelly’s trial. This passage is excerpted from a memoir now posted in its entirety on the Bookshelf:
“Among the more obscene performances I witnessed by the prosecution was a long argument that Robert Kelly had had vaginal intercourse with a five-year-old girl.
“On a screen about four feet square the prosecutor displayed a color slide the girl’s genitalia, with two adult thumbs shown pulling back the labia to display the hymen and vaginal opening. The hymen appeared fully intact, covering most of the vaginal opening. The prosecutor thus spent what I recall as hours arguing that the stretch marks in the hymen were evidence of adult penile penetration.
“I wondered why the defense attorney did not rise up and ask if this were Alice in Wonderland…. It was as if I had entered an alternate universe.”