On the front line for children Michelle Henry prosecutes abuse cases. It's gruesome work with high stakes.

Author: Matthew P. Blanchard INQUIRER SUBURBAN STAFF

No one wants to hear the stories Michelle Henry has to tell. No one really wants to see her evidence. So she must prepare them.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury," she begins. "Some of the things you're going to see and hear in this trial are extremely unpleasant, and difficult to listen to.

"But, that's because of what he did," she says, pointing at the accused.

Henry, 33, is a specialized prosecutor for the Bucks County District Attorney's Office. While others prosecute robbers, killers and cheats, Henry crawls into what she considers the real sewer of human nature: the physical and sexual abuse of children.

As head of child-abuse prosecution, Henry must walk juries into homes where fathers rape their daughters, where mothers savagely beat their children for the slightest infraction, or - as in

There seem to be few limits to what some children are made to suffer, Henry says. And their suffering happens in secret, with the shades drawn and doors locked. Shame keeps them silent.

Consider the case of Jonathan Alderton, a 39-year-old Plumstead man accused of repeatedly raping a girl for eight years, starting when she was 6. The victim, now 16, had been assaulted hundreds of times, and never went to police, authorities said.

But then Alderton's nephew, Patrick Alderton, 24, who is a friend of the victim's, learned of the abuse and bought a shotgun. He followed Jonathan Alderton's pickup truck to a rural intersection and shot him through the window in August 2000.

Jonathan Alderton survived, and Patrick Alderton was sentenced to two to four years in Bucks County prison. But the abuse case was blown wide open.

Eventually, Henry coaxed the young victim forward and put her on the stand, hitting the jury with her graphic, first-person account.

On the witness stand, Jonathan Alderton was a picture of self-assurance. Henry channeled her outrage into her closing argument.

"No one wants to believe that someone would take a little girl, betray her, and do these despicable things to her," Henry told the jury. "But it's real and it's true and it happened here. . . . It happens all the time."

Convicted, Jonathan Alderton faces up to 90 years in prison.

"Victims don't come forward because they're afraid no one will believe them," Henry said. "For the jury to come back and say, 'We believe you,' it can have a healing effect on the victim."

It can be gruesome work with high stakes. Losing an abuse case hits her hard as the attorney, but it hits the victim much, much harder, she says.

But Henry - whose petite size is magnified by her intense demeanor - says that she loves her work.

She was just a middle-schooler when she decided she wanted to prosecute criminals. Why, she cannot remember, though it might have been the adrenaline rush of public speaking. She was never a bashful child. "The court is sort of like a stage. From the moment you walk in, the jurors watch everything you do," she said. "And every move matters."

Henry grew up in Greensburg, outside Pittsburgh, and attended Allegheny College, studying pre-law. She earned a law degree at Widener University's Harrisburg branch and then spent a year clerking for a Lancaster County judge. Her older brother went into law, though on the opposite end of the spectrum. He's a wealthy partner in a patent law firm in Washington.

"He's never been in a courtroom in his life," she said. "My job is more exciting, but his summer vacations to Costa Rica are better than my trips to the Jersey Shore."

In 1995, she came to Bucks County as an assistant district attorney. In 1998, she was promoted to the head of child abuse. She's single, lives near Doylestown, and also has prosecuted cases having nothing to do with child abuse, including the case of Heather Miller, who was convicted of trying to kill her husband with poisoned mashed potatoes.

Henry is called, however, to child-abuse cases. Working with traumatized children is a delicate, often frustrating job. Her visual aids at trial can include some pretty unsettling items, such as poster-size photos of injured children. It takes up all her time, she says, and it isn't much like television's Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, which she doesn't have time to watch, anyway.

But it is essential work. Unlike a robbery or a bar fight, which happen once and are over, child abuse is the type of crime that can go on for years.

Ending the tyranny of an adult abuser means rescuing children from future harm. And being paid to rescue children, she says, is a satisfying job.