Joe Lavigne, Jr.

"Folks, there are no videotapes. There's no DNA, no semen, no confession. There's nothing that links Joe Lavigne to this brutal act. This case revolves around her words," the prosecutor told the jury in Mr. Lavigne’s case.

But the jury never heard her words. They never materialized. The girl was only on the stand for a short time and her answers didn’t implicate her father, but at times, exonerated him. For example, when Barbera Allen, Mr. Lavigne’s attorney, asked where her father was while she was being raped, she told the jury he was “inside.�

At other times, she told the jury she didn’t know who had attacked her and as early as a few hours after the rape, her story changed from “my daddy� to someone who “looked� like her daddy. In the hospital, according to the testimony of the doctor that examined her, she said her attacker “had long hair, like my daddy used to have� and according to Mr. Lavigne's attorney, when interviewed by police months later, she said four separate times that she didn’t know who had raped her.

Ms. Allen told the jury in her closing argument that “(y)es, we know what (she) said right at the beginning. He’s (Mr. Lavigne) the one who made that public. He’s the one who did that. From then on, ladies and gentlemen, she has never said it again.�

And despite that Mr. Lavigne's daughter never implicated her father at the trial,  other witnesses seemed more than willing to fill-in the holes in the girl’s testimony.