Sex abuse victim kills himself after abuser uses loophole to escape
prison
By Paula McMahon
Staff Writer
Posted July 3 2003
He left the suicide notes in the bedroom where his wife and 4-year-old
daughter sleep.
"I'm sorry for being a quitter, but it's been a year and the thought
is still there," Chris Haman wrote. "Please forgive me."
Haman had kept a secret for 15 years. It was a secret that made him
angry and ashamed, he said in court records.
He finally realized he had to do something about it during an
emotional fight with his wife, Mindy, when he looked at her but saw
Frederick Irizarry's face instead.
On his 26th birthday, April 3, 2002, Haman told the secret to his
parents and his wife: For about two months when he was 11 or 12, the
man he called "Uncle Freddie" sexually abused him dozens of times at
Irizarry's Coconut Creek home.
After talking about it Haman got so upset that he threatened to drive
into a canal, his family said. While he spent a few days in a
psychiatric hospital being treated for his suicidal depression, his
parents reported the sexual abuse to police.
Under questioning by a detective, Irizarry immediately confessed,
according to police and court records. Criminal charges were filed and
Irizarry was looking at life in prison for raping the boy. Irizarry
was about 20 at the time of the crime.
But in the year that the case traveled through the court system, the
defense raised a question about whether Haman was 11 or 12 when he was
abused. Haman's age at the time was crucial. If he was 11, there is no
statute of limitations for prosecuting the abuser. But if he was 12,
the time limit had already run out.
On April 28, only days after learning his abuser would likely never go
to prison, Haman shot himself in the head. He was 27.
Now his relatives want the story contained in court records, police
reports and interviews to be told. They are campaigning to change the
statute of limitations to give equal protection to all children. They
will attend a hearing Monday in Broward Circuit Court when Irizarry is
expected to plead guilty to the abuse.
To his family, the spirit of Chris Haman will be present in that
courtroom. "My only regret," he wrote in a suicide note to his wife
and parents, "is not taking out Freddie."
THE SYSTEM
Stacey Honowitz has been prosecuting sex crimes in Broward County for
16 years. She's known for her tough, straight-talking defense of sex
abuse victims.
But when she speaks about Haman, she puts her head down on her desk
and sobs.
She talked to Haman many times about their case. She tried to boost
his confidence and reassure him he had done the right thing by coming
forward.
She pointed to the big filing cabinet in the corner of her office and
told him, as she tells all the victims, that he shouldn't be ashamed.
That filing cabinet is full of the stories of people who were abused
just like him.
She knew he was fragile, but a year after he had revealed the secret,
she thought he seemed to be coping better. He could talk about the
abuse.
She also had to be honest with him. The judge would be legally obliged
to dismiss the case if they couldn't prove that Haman was 11, not 12,
when he was abused. The Legislature wrote the law in a way that gives
more protection to children aged 11 and younger, for reasons that
legal experts cannot fully explain.
After reviewing school records, Honowitz knew they had a problem. She
called Haman to suggest he think about whether they should offer
Irizarry a plea agreement.
Going to trial would be risky, she said. It could mean Irizarry would
get life in prison -- or the case could get thrown out on the timing
technicality and Irizarry could go free.
Haman said he understood. Honowitz told him she would continue to
research the case and try to figure out a way to go ahead with the
trial and get the maximum punishment. That was on a Wednesday.
She took the case file home with her that weekend to work on it.
But on the following Monday, there was a message on her voicemail.
Early that morning, Haman had shot himself in the head in his truck in
the driveway of his mother's Margate home.
"I felt like I was the one that sent him over the edge," Honowitz
said, scrubbing at her tears.
"I think I know what it's like for the victims. They come in here
every day and I think I know what it's like, but I don't know."
THE FAMILY
Shania wants to know why Daddy didn't pack his clothes when he moved
to heaven.
Her mother, Mindy, knows the answer to that question will get more
complicated as the child grows up.
Someday, she will be able to read the suicide note her father left for
her. It was hard to end his own life, he wrote, but he had been
hurting for a long time, he was a victim of a crime and he thought it
would be best if he left everyone forever. You are the most important
thing in my life, he told her.
Now Haman's relatives blame themselves, just as Honowitz blames
herself.
Looking back, the family recognizes the hints. Haman would never
change his daughter's diaper or bathe her, his wife said in an
interview. Someone had told him that a person who was abused may be
more likely to molest others and he was afraid he would continue the
pattern, so he held back in showing his fatherly affection for her.
Mindy and Chris Haman met in 1992 when they attended Coconut Creek
High School. They sneaked into each other's homes to spend the night
together.
The relationship seemed good; they were best friends. But in the last
two years, they didn't get along.
"We were fighting over stupid things," Mindy said. "He would just get
in this rage. He would break things. He wasn't like that before."
The emotional problems from the abuse kept simmering in Haman until
they boiled over, his family said. The abuse affected his marriage,
his work, his friendships.
He and Mindy were living separately while they tried to fix their
marriage. Haman got a job driving a produce truck because he couldn't
concentrate on running the car-refurbishing business he had set up.
The day before he died, Haman did his laundry, then spent most of the
day with his wife and daughter. In the evening he kicked a soccer ball
around with Shania. He seemed emotional when he kissed and hugged them
good night and left for his mother's house in Margate, where he was
staying.
Mindy got nervous and called her mother-in-law, Sharon Farer, to check
on him.
When she went into his room, Haman was lying on his bed, eating chips
and watching ESPN.
Everything's OK and she should go to sleep, he assured her. At
midnight, she woke and checked again. "I'm fine, Mom," he told her.
The next morning, Farer found her son dead in his truck in the
driveway. He had shot himself in the head with a long-forgotten gun
that his great-grandfather once bought.
Everybody wants to know why, and the answer is not simple. Experts on
abuse say it was probably a combination of everything from unresolved
issues about the exploitation, frustration at not getting to punish
his attacker, and despair.
"I think it was everything," Farer said. "All of it just got to be too
much for him and he couldn't handle the pain anymore."
Haman's father, Greg Haman, cries the whole time during a phone call
from his home in Pasadena, Md.
He thinks he should have guessed his son was abused. He wonders why
Chris didn't tell him until he was 26. He fears that Irizarry
victimized his son to get back at the father for some imagined slight.
"I'm going to do everything I can to make sure this doesn't happen to
another family. I will go anywhere, talk to anyone," Greg Haman said.
"I can't get even because I will never get my son back."
THE ABUSER
At first, Irizarry was like an uncle to Haman, whose father was living
with Irizarry's sister.
There was an eight-year age gap between them but they played video and
board games together and Irizarry would take Haman fishing and drop
him off at soccer practice.
The abuse began in 1987 or 1988, when Haman was sent to sleep over at
the Irizarry family home because there wasn't enough room at his dad's
cramped apartment.
In his 16-page taped confession, Irizarry said he victimized Haman
"maybe 50 times" and "every night almost" during the two months Haman
slept in his bedroom.
Haman told detectives in his sworn statements that, after the first
assault, Irizarry threatened if he ever told anyone, Haman's dad would
be deported to his native Greece. The boy said he believed him, not
realizing that his father was a U.S. citizen.
Irizarry denied that in his confession, but said he knew at the time
what he was doing was a crime. He said he regretted the abuse.
"I'll do anything to help Chris," Irizarry told the detective in his
April 2002 statement.
Irizarry's attorney, Carlos Rodriguez, would not allow him to speak to
a reporter.
But Rodriguez said Irizarry, now 35 and a real estate investor, is
"totally, terribly devastated" by Haman's death, feels guilty and is
taking responsibility for the abuse. He said Irizarry wanted to
resolve the case even before Haman died. Irizarry also was reluctant
to base his defense on the technicality of whether the victim was a
few months older than he said he was.
"It's about as bad as it gets," Rodriguez said. "It's not the type of
thing he wants to go to trial on. Who wants to go to trial on a
technical defense to a case like this? The terribly sad thing is that
this would have been resolved."
On Monday, Irizarry is scheduled to plead guilty. He is no longer
looking at life in a prison. The deal struck by the prosecution and
defense will put him on probation for 10 years, make him a convicted
felon and force him to register as a sex offender. But he will go
free.
***
Homosexuals have no remorse for their crimes. Their promiscuous lust
for sex with young boys is far greater than their self control. One
need only consider the behavior of the hundreds of homosexual Catholic
priest who for decades sexually abused and raped young boys in the
churches and young men in the seminaries. Homosexuals are clear and
present danger in our society not only as the number one vector od
deadly diseases such as AIDS but because of the extreme danger they
pose for the young males among us. This news report is a perfect
example of the problem.
