Why was Zimmerman's cousin afraid of him? (+audio)

Despite a last-minute rush to the courthouse by the defense to keep a witness’s damaging story out of public view, prosecutors on Monday released a recorded statement from George Zimmerman’s cousin, who said Zimmerman molested her for 10 years, beginning when she was 6 years old.

Like most other witnesses in the case, the woman’s name was not released. Dubbed “Witness 9,” she is 26 and lives in central Florida. She called investigators shortly after Zimmerman was arrested in the shooting of black teenager Trayvon Martin to say that Zimmerman and his family were racists. The evidence released Monday shows she also called a state attorney about three weeks later with more serious allegations.

She told investigators Jim Post and Jim Rick that her family and Zimmerman’s lived in different states, but inappropriate incidents of a sexual nature took place during annual visits until she was 16. Although just two years younger than Zimmerman, she said she was scared of him because he was bigger, older and stronger.

She described him as a charmer who made everyone laugh and love him. He was different, she said, when alone with her behind closed doors.

When she was 6 and her family was in the process of moving from Louisiana to Florida, she said, she and her sister were sent to stay with the Zimmermans at their home in Virginia. The children would lie on sofas under blankets to watch TV, and Zimmerman, she claims, would use the opportunity to fondle her and penetrate her with his fingers, even though there were other people in the room.

“That’s my earliest memory of him trying to do things. He would reach under the blankets,” she said. “He was bigger and stronger and older. I was a kid. I didn’t know any better.”

Arguing that the allegation was irrelevant to the murder charge, Zimmerman’s defense attorney, Mark O’Mara, had two hearings before Seminole County Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester in an effort to seal the witness statement. Lester twice ruled against him.

O’Mara filed a motion Monday morning to put a stop to the judge’s ruling just minutes before the statement’s scheduled release. Absent an order from the court to hold off, the Duval County state attorney, trying Zimmerman on a second-degree murder charge for the killing of Martin, released the statement, along with audio of more than a hundred phone calls Zimmerman made from jail.

“Now that this statement is part of the public record, the defense will vigorously defend Mr. Zimmermanagainst the allegations,” O’Mara wrote on his website. “In the next several weeks, there will be reciprocal discovery filed regarding Witness No. 9’s statement.”

The judge said in his ruling that nothing in Florida’s public-records law allows for such information to be kept secret. By law, evidence the prosecution turns over to the defense — called “discovery” — is public record. There are exceptions for things such as telecommunications records and confessions.

Lawyers for McClatchy Newspapers, the Orlando Sentinel and other media argued for the release of the statement and about 150 of Zimmerman’s recorded jailhouse calls. At a hearing held last month, Assistant State Attorney Bernie de la Rionda said he may call Witness 9 as a rebuttal witness at trial.

Benjamin Crump, an attorney for Martin’s family, compared the testimony to the recent child-molestation case involving former Pennsylvania State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.

“She certainly would be a rebuttal witness very similar to that in the Sandusky trial, showing that he has a history of violence and manipulation,” Crump said. “Zimmerman’s mentality is very relevant to this trial.”

Crump and his team have known about the woman from the early stages of the case, because she approached them after calling the police and prosecutors. Orlando attorney Natalie Jackson, who also represents Martin’s family, spoke to Witness 9 on several occasions, but declined to discuss what she said. Reached earlier this month by McClatchy Newspapers, Witness 9 declined to be interviewed.

In her statement, Witness 9 said she kept the allegations secret for years because of Zimmerman’s popularity among his family.

Experts said children who act out sexually with other kids have often been exposed to domestic violence and pornography. Children as young as 8 — the age the witness said Zimmerman was when he first touched her inappropriately — are generally not considered sex offenders, and would be referred to get therapeutic help.

“If a child was coerced or forced or intimidated or manipulated by an older child, in that sense, they are being victimized,” said Jill Levenson, a Lynn University expert in sex abuse. “Eight is pretty young to be initiating sexual activity. You’re talking about more than, ‘Can I see it?’ So the questions become: Where did the 8-year-old learn that, and does that 8-year-old need some help?”

She stressed that she has no knowledge of the case and was speaking in general terms.

©2012 The Miami Herald

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