Parents struggle to regain daughter's trust after rape

She's almost 6 now. She panics around strange men, is wary of strangers in general and has started calling her father by his first name, rather than "Daddy."

Kevin and Hope Evans sat through the trial last week for Samuel Farrow Jr., the man who kidnapped and sexually molested their daughter in November 2000. For the first time, they heard a tape of their daughter talking to a nurse and a female deputy describing a rape with the limited vocabulary of a 4-year-old.

She's hostile to her baby brother, whom she used to adore.

But what breaks her mother's heart is that she no longer calls out for her parents when she's upset or frightened.

"She told me, 'Mommy, I yelled for you and you didn't come,'" Hope Evans said.

The pair said they're struggling to regain their little girl's trust.

Farrow faces a possible eight life sentences when he goes back to court May 28, but that hasn't quelled the little girl's nightmares.

That will take time, said Tammy Gwaltney, director of the Southeast Missouri Network against Sexual Violence.

The Evans' daughter is an anomaly in sexual assault cases.

"The case of the stranger assault is the rare one," Gwaltney said. Of the 210 children -- age 16 weeks to 16 years -- treated last year at the local clinic, not one was sexually assaulted by a stranger, Gwaltney said. The same can be said for the 60 clients who've been through the doors this year.

"People who have access to your children are the people who molest them," Gwaltney said.

Another little girl, who lived in that trailer before the Evans did, was not a stranger to Farrow.

He was friends with her mother and baby-sat the 6-year-old girl and her brothers from time to time.

She disappeared for a much shorter time than the next girl.

In fact, just after her family noticed she was missing, she walked through her front door with an unbelievable story of a man who kidnapped her and did things to her.

Listening last week to the videotape of her child's statement to police, Rebecca Yamnitz sobbed.

But she said her daughter, now almost 8 and in grade school, is a strong child.

Yamnitz and her husband, Ryan, said they're constantly counting heads and have a tough time letting anyone out of their sight.

"Sometimes she talks to her favorite teacher, and we encourage that," Yamnitz said.

Gwaltney said both girls may very well go on to live happy, healthy lives.

"You will never forget," she said. "You will never be the same, but you can move on."

abuchanan@semissourian.com

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