Chicago — Raising her head and making eye movements to communicate, the 13-year-old known as Girl X took testified Friday about the attack in 1997 that left her blind, crippled and mute.
She was the third witness called in the trial of Patrick Sykes, 29, who is accused of raping, beating and pouring roach killer down her throat in the attack at the crime-ridden Cabrini-Green housing project. She has been called Girl X in the news media.
She arrived in the courtroom in a wheelchair, her arms useless in front of her. At times, she seemed almost about to doze off, but her answers to questions from prosecutor Anita Alvarez showed that she was alert.
As speech therapist Barbara Robinson called out the girl's "yes" or "no" responses, Girl X told how she had gone up a stairwell in the housing project and met a man on the fifth floor who lured her into an apartment by offering her a banana.
"What did he do when he was standing in front of you?" Alvarez asked. The words were spelled slowly: "Pull out k-n ... ."
"Did he pull out a knife?" Alvarez asked. The girl looked upward to indicate "yes."
As the slow process continued, the girl told how her assailant forced her into a bedroom and told her to get on the bed. After an hour of testimony, she asked for a break.
Sykes is charged with predatory criminal sexual assault, aggravated kidnapping and attempted murder in the Jan. 9, 1997, attack.
"The defendant grabbed her and the unspeakable horror was on the acts that turned (her) into Girl X, a speechless, crippled and blind child," prosecutor William O'Brien said as the trial opened. "He took her dignity, he took her sight, he took her speech, he took her ability to move, to reach and to walk, and he almost took her life."
O'Brien acknowledged that police, who arrested Sykes nearly three months after the attack following 2 1/2 days of interrogation, made "missteps" and that no physical evidence links Sykes to the girl. O'Brien said Sykes confessed to detectives during the questioning.
But defense attorney Robert Byman told jurors his client suffered an epileptic seizure under interrogation and could remember nothing of any confession.
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