Lawyer calls therapist’s testimony in Prentice case inconsistent

Prosecutors attempted to poke holes in a therapist’s testimony Tuesday that Donna Prentice was a victim of abuse who used various coping mechanisms to deal with the loss of her daughter.

Prentice is on trial for the murder of her then-3-year-old daughter, Michelle, in Huntington Beach in 1969.

No one has seen the girl since Prentice, her son, her then-boyfriend James Michael “Mike” Kent and his son moved to Illinois.

Prentice originally stood trial with Kent, who testified before he died in 2005 that he buried Michelle in a shallow grave in Williams Canyon.

The defense maintains Prentice was simply another victim of Kent’s history of abusive relationships. Linda Bernard, an expert in domestic violence who said she has worked with thousands of battered women, performed a professional evaluation of Prentice.

In court, she described what she saw as an escalation of Kent’s abuse of Prentice, saying she had no evidence to believe Kent was physically abusive until after Michelle disappeared.

Bernard said she perceived evidence of Kent having used physical and emotional violence against Prentice after the move, after reading testimonies and interviews. She was most concerned with reports that Kent choked Prentice and used a gun near her.

Prentice typically responded by trying to please or placate Kent, but tried to escape several times, Bernard said. Prentice came back to the destructive relationship when Kent used her son or stepson as tools.

Bernard discussed the cycle of domestic violence, which begins as tension, erupts in a violent episode and is followed with a “honeymoon period” in which the victim believes everything will be all right. The cycle repeats itself until the victim finally leaves the relationship.

“[Victims] want to believe that somehow the bad behaviors are the exception,” Bernard said. “Donna, like many battered women, lives on hope.”

For example, Prentice named several places she believed Michelle was during various law enforcement interviews, and told an investigator more than 30 years after her daughter’s disappearance that she wanted him to find Michelle for her.

Bernard said such hopes and desires were indicative of Prentice’s using coping mechanisms to deal with her intense fear of Kent.

During cross-examination, Senior Deputy District Attorney Larry Yellin tried to invalidate Bernard’s report, pointing out several inaccuracies.

In one case, Bernard wrote that Kent abused both of Prentice’s children, Richie and Michelle, although it was never stated in materials Bernard reviewed that Kent had done anything to Michelle, other than the perception that he may be guilty of killing the girl.

Bernard also stated during the trial that she knew of several battered women who had left their children behind and didn’t look for them afterward.

Both statements contradicted Bernard’s conclusion that Kent wasn’t abusive until after the family moved to Illinois, Yellin indicated.

In addition, Yellin pointed out that Bernard has a bias toward people who have been victims of abuse, which might cloud her impartiality.

“In the 60s, we all knew domestic violence occurred, but there was no real education of professionals,” Bernard had said.

‘Fallible’ memories

An expert on hypnosis testified Monday on the unreliability of memories in Prentice’s retrial.

Alternate Public Defender Ken Norelli brought professor Steven Jay Lynn to the stand to help refute a claim by Prentice’s son, Richard Pulsifer Jr., that during a hypnosis session in the early 1980s, Pulsifer remembered little Michelle running into his room the morning of her disappearance, saying “Hide me, hide me.”

Pulsifer said his mother then came to take Michelle away.

Lynn, a highly published clinical and academic psychologist who specializes in memory and hypnosis, testified that a person’s memory is highly fallible, and dependent on a person’s current mood, beliefs and expectations.

“Because people tend to believe that hypnosis has special powers, they have an expectation that it will improve memories,” Lynn said.

Pulsifer was said to have his father and stepmother in the room with him during the hypnosis session, which Lynn said could add to the chance of a confabulation, or made-up memory.

Other people present during a session must be expert hypnotherapists who are aware of such ‘tainting’ effects, Lynn said.

“People in the room confuse our unconscious through body language, and comments can cue the subject in very subtle ways,” Lynn said.

He added that having parents in the room may create a desire to please them, calling Pulsifer’s hypnosis session a “clear violation of safeguards.”

Just another victim?

Norelli hopes to prove that Prentice was just another victim of Kent’s abuse, who was too scared of Kent to ask her daughter’s whereabouts.

Norelli also presented several other facts that were undisputed by the prosecution, including that Kent had several felonies and misdemeanors — including those for aggravated battery and vandalism — and several violations of a protective order issued on his former girlfriend, Corinne Hall.

Hall met Kent in 1979, Norelli said, and had a relationship with him for the next ten years that included heavy drug and alcohol use and several abusive episodes.

Hall said Kent shoved her down stairs, punched her in the head, pulled her hair and spit in her face, Norelli said.

Like Prentice, Hall tried to flee several times but was forced back into the relationship by Kent, she said in a past statement.

Prentice finally left Kent for the last time, with her son, when he shot a gun several times near her head, she said.

CANDICE BAKER can be reached at (714) 966-4631 or at [email protected].