Delaware County Daily Times - Aug 22, 1999 Article

Case of missing child argues for rack's return by Gil Spencer

Delaware County Daily Times (Primos - Upper Darby, PA) - Sunday, August 22, 1999

Today, I wish to make an argument for the return of an ancient investigative tool that has fallen in disrepute because of our evolving standards of decency.

I am talking about the rack.

Introduced in England during the reign of Henry VI, the rack was quite effective in getting suspects to admit things. Granted, not all the things confessed to were true. (Often, the suspect was not, in fact, a witch.) But this is beside the point. Just because the rack was misused in the past doesn't mean it couldn't be effective, used sparingly and judiciously, in certain situations today.

It might even save a life or two.

For instance, and this is what got me thinking about it, the case of Katelyn Rivera-Helton.

She is the 20-month-old child who has been missing for more than a week after police say she was kidnapped by her father. Her father, however, is not missing.

The day after allegedly beating up his former girlfriend and taking her little girl, Robert Rivera turned himself in to police. He has been in custody ever since.

Mr. Rivera maintains that he gave his daughter away to strangers, but his story is almost surely a lie. In the meantime, federal and local investigators question potential witnesses and search river beds in Maryland.

While this goes on, Jennifer Helton, Katelyn's mother, can do nothing more than pray and hope for the best.

Of course, there is one person who knows exactly where Katelyn Rivera-Helton is. But he isn't talking.

This is where I think the rack would come in handy.

If Robert Rivera, to punish his girlfriend for leaving him, left her daughter out in some remote woods, time would be of the essence. A brief racking might well convince him to tell the police her whereabouts and thus save her life.

Even if she was safe and sound, a quick confession from Mr. Rivera would more quickly reunite the child with her grief-stricken mother. Wouldn't that be worth a little temporary discomfort to the likes of Mr. Rivera?

We are, after all, talking about a self-deluding narcissist, a man who can rationalize stealing a child to inflict pain, to assuage his own pathetic hurt feelings.

Mr. Rivera's lawyer, Albert Greto, tells us that his client""loves'' his child and ""has never in the past -- nor is there any indication he ever would -- harm her in any way.''

Let's hope Mr. Greto knows more than he is telling. Either that Katelyn is alive and well or that she is dead and buried. Anything but slowly starving to death in a remote patch of woods.

It would be to rescue a child from just such a situation I believe the use of torture would be wholly justified.

My friend, the defense lawyer, disagrees with me. Mostly on the grounds, he says, that it wouldn't work as well as the system we have in place today.

""Basically, the 20th century version (of the rack) is promising NOT to torture you if you tell us what we want.''

In this case, he says, it's the prosecution that could have forced the issue on day one by offering Rivera full immunity to tell where the girl is.

After all, asks the lawyer, isn't that the greatest priority, getting the girl back safe and sound?

""Who cares if Rivera goes free?''

I can think of a few people.

But the message freeing Rivera might send to other would-be kidnappers of their own children? The lawyer isn't buying.

""Down the road some other Rivera is not going to think about it before he does something this stupid,'' he said.

He said if he were Rivera's lawyer the first thing he'd do is polygraph him. Three questions: Is the girl alive? Did you give her away? Do you know where she is?

He'd get the truth out of him and then go from there.

Adding, ""If she's dead, all bets are off.''

The only reason prosecutors don't offer early immunity more in cases like this, the lawyer says, is because they're afraid of looking soft and being criticized.

Personally, I could live with a prosecutor who freed the likes of Rivera if he needed to do so to save an innocent child's life.

But it's too late for that now. The girl is either stashed with adults who are caring for her or she's dead.

And if she'd dead, racking's too good for her father.