Plains town torn apart by rape, aftermath

By Mike McPhee
Denver Post Staff Writer

Sunday, August 05, 2001 - HOLYOKE (Colorado) - When 12-year-old Miranda Whittaker was
raped two years ago by her neighbor, the captain of the high school wrestling team, she was devastated.

But what followed, after she named 18-year-old Trent Chappell as her rapist, was worse.

After suffering through intense bullying, intimidation and threats for a year and a half, one afternoon she brushed her brown hair, then quietly walked into her parents' carpeted bedroom, picked up her father's .44-caliber Magnum pistol and put it to her head.

"I hate to say this, but after what happened to Miranda, I don't know if I would tell another victim to go to the legal system," said her dad, Mark Whittaker. "I might just tell them to move away."

Now, two years after the rape, the residents of Holyoke - a farming town 9 miles from Nebraska - are struggling to deal with what happened.

Chappell, who declined to comment for this story, was sentenced to four years' probation for sexual assault on a child and now lives in Greeley as a registered sex offender.

Miranda's family is angry that the school didn't do more to prevent the bullying, so they are preparing to sue the school district.

And another high school student claims that she, too, was raped by Chappell when she was 16, out of which she bore a daughter. She has sued him.

Crime reports, court records and numerous interviews with authorities, relatives and townspeople tell the story of a small town that couldn't protect one of its own.

On June 2, 1999, Miranda was spending the night across the street with two friends, Trent Chappell's sisters.

About 9:30 p.m., she agreed to ride with their older brother, Trent, to get some sodas. After stopping at a grocery store, Chappell parked his white 1996 Pontiac behind Carruther's Farm Equipment manufacturing building on the west edge of town.

Chappell, a powerful 6-foot, 185-pound athlete, leaned over and asked the seventh-grade girl if she had ever had an orgasm. Miranda, who wore braces and thought more about basketball than boys, said she didn't know what an orgasm was, according to the arrest affidavit for Chappell.

Chappell pulled off her shorts and swimsuit bottom and raped her, records show.

Miranda's parents said they knew nothing about it for three months, until a doctor giving her a routine medical exam on Sept. 13, 1999, noticed that she had been penetrated. Presented with the medical evidence, Miranda broke into tears and told her parents she'd been raped.

Mark and Stacey Whittaker, who lost a 5-year-old son to cancer 10 years earlier, said they were stunned when Miranda named the boy who lived directly across Sheridan Avenue as her attacker.

The families, especially the two mothers, had always been friends. They would never speak again.

People in Holyoke, which has 11 churches for 1,900 residents, have learned to cope with a lot: the weather, low crop prices and the occasional sour whiff from the Seaboard hog farm just outside of town.

What they don't handle well are social problems, particularly crime, say many of those interviewed for this story.

People asked how a star athlete like Chappell could do any wrong. Maybe the girl had been suggestive. But she was only 12, others said. No matter what happened, it was nobody else's business.

That indifference and doubt, Miranda's mother said, brutalized her daughter for a second time.

On top of that, Chappell, his sisters and some of his friends harassed and taunted her.

"The revictimization is so much harder than the rape itself," said Stacey Whittaker. "It lasts longer. It comes from more than one person. And you never know when it's going to happen.

"We became very concerned about Miranda. She would come home and ask: "Mom, why would they say that about me? I didn't do that.' We were constantly telling her she did the right thing, that what had happened to her was wrong."

A month after the bullying began, a frightened Miranda got a restraining order against Chappell that prohibited him from coming within 100 yards of the Whittakers. On the same day, Miranda's 17-year-old brother, Josh, president of the senior class and Chappell's friend for 10 years, said he, too, was being harassed and got a separate restraining order against him.

Still, the threats continued, the Whittakers said.

Mark Whittaker, a carpenter and former teacher and coach, said he complained to Holyoke High School principal Terry Pottorff. Nothing came of it, he said. Pottorff could not be reached for comment.

On Dec. 2, 1999, after three months of investigation by Holyoke police and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, Trent Chappell was arrested and charged with sexual assault on a child, a felony that carries a maximum sentence of six years in prison.

Chappell, a senior having his best year ever as a wrestler, pleaded not guilty and continued with his classes and athletics at the combined middle and high school.

"The school did nothing about the charges and the restraining orders," said Mark Whittaker. "He never missed a day of school. And people went out of their way to make sure he wrestled every Saturday."

On Jan. 21, 2000, Miranda filed a complaint with the school that Chappell surprised her in the school parking lot after a basketball game, yelling, "Bang, bang, you're dead," according to attorney Steven Taffett. In April 2000, Miranda complained to the school that Chappell and a friend confronted her by the counselor's office and taunted her.

This time, Stacey Whittaker said she called then-Police Chief Mark Dion. Dion, now studying law in Omaha, said he went to the school but couldn't substantiate the complaints. He said the Chappells, too, had complained, but those allegations also were unprovable.

"For a while, we got complaints regularly from all sides that someone was flipping off the other or calling each other names," he said.

It wasn't until March 30, 2001, nearly two years after the rape, that the Whittakers received their first written response from the school district in the form of a letter from James Pfau, president of the Board of Education.

He said the school had taken "a reasonable approach."

"The administration did not believe that they had adequate information to conclude that Trent had sexually assaulted Miranda," Pfau wrote. "(N)either (Superintendent Wayne W.) Brown nor (principal) Pottorff received any complaints regarding harassment of Miranda by Trent or other students at the school."

But Brown, in an interview two weeks ago, contradicted that letter.

"I had concerns brought to me, which I referred on to the principal," he said. "You can't find corroboration, and they end up as he-said, she-said. But I like to think we did what we could to accommodate both families."

After the 1999-2000 school year in Holyoke, Miranda moved in with grandparents five blocks away to avoid the Chappells.

"That brought a big change around for her," said Mark. "She really got happier."

As school approached, Miranda begged her parents not to send her back to class in Holyoke, and she transferred to the high school in neighboring Haxtun, whose town slogan is "A Great Place To Raise a Family."

"It was great," Stacey said.

"Her grades went up," her brother Josh said. "She went to every football game. They really accepted her well."

Meanwhile, Chappell had been embroiled in legal issues from the other rape accusation against him, made by the 16-year-old girl two days before Miranda said Chappell assaulted her.

Chappell initially denied raping the other girl. But after she delivered a daughter, he sued in Phillips County Court for parental rights. He lost, and now is due in court Monday to face allegations of violating a restraining order the girl has against him.

The girl, who wouldn't testify in criminal proceedings against him, filed a civil suit against Chappell in September 2000, alleging assault, battery, false imprisonment and outrageous conduct. He has denied the accusations.

Three months after the civil suit was filed, and a year after he was charged in the Miranda Whittaker case, Trent Chappell pleaded no contest in December 2000 to sexually assaulting Miranda.

His plea bargain gave him a deferred judgment and four years' probation for sexual assault on a child. While on probation, he must register as a sex offender, attend rehabilitation classes and avoid contact with anyone younger than 18, including his siblings. If he fulfills the terms of his probation, his plea will be withdrawn and the case dismissed.

"These cases are extremely difficult to prove,"' said prosecutor Chris Collins. "Miranda was a great little girl, but she was terrified at testifying. The problem here was Trent Chappell was a big man on campus, a stud. He had a sense of invincibility.

"I'm not happy at all with that, but I wasn't confident about our chances at a trial. A lot of times, juries don't believe this happens. They want corroborating evidence that she was hurt trying to resist, and sometimes that doesn't happen."

A month after Chappell's plea agreement, on Jan. 22, Mark Whittaker picked up Miranda, now 14, from basketball practice and drove her home. Miranda seemed tired. She went to the bathroom to brush her hair.

She smiled at her father in the mirror as he went downstairs to watch
television.

"I heard a thump, like something heavy had been dropped on the floor," Mark said. He ran upstairs to find Miranda had shot herself in the head. "It was a big gun. The only good thing was she didn't suffer at all."

"We'll never know what was going on with her," Mark said. "We thought she was doing much better. Her calendar was full until March. She had been on the Internet applying for a basketball camp at the University of Connecticut."

"It wasn't the gun that killed her," Josh said, it was the hostility and indifference his sister had to contend with.

"It's a shame the schools didn't provide more of a safe environment for her," Josh said. "Obviously something was wrong, and they didn't do anything. I don't want anything out of this except some changes at the school, for the kids coming up in the future."

Two months after Miranda's death, the letter from education board President Pfau arrived expressing sympathy but denying responsibility.

Terri Chappell, Trent's mother, would say only: "I don't see the point of writing a story. There is so much pain. It's a day-to-day thing we are living so that we don't end up with a dead child. That is what we fear. I would like it to stop. I'm trying to help our children put their lives back
together."

Stacey Whittaker, sitting with tears in her eyes in her living room beneath Miranda's portrait, said she worries about rape victims.

"I'm afraid that anyone who saw what happened to Miranda might not come forward now," she said. "That would be a terrible shame."

Both families have put their homes up for sale. They plan to leave Holyoke.