Posted on 11/05/2009 1:24:50 PM PST by ETL
The Queens woman who mutilated her father and burned his penis on the stove has been taking a cooking class in jail.
Brigitte Harris, who faces up to 15 years in prison for killing her dad when she is sentenced on Friday, also has been biding her time on Rikers Island by reading vampire novels and mysteries.
In a jailhouse interview with the Daily News, the soft-spoken, crucifix-wearing woman said she never intended to murder her father, Eric Goodridge.
"Thinking back now, I definitely would have tried to put my resources into getting him put in jail," she said. "But I thought that people weren't going to believe me."
Harris, 29, who claims her father started raping her when she was 3 and had sex with other underage girls in Liberia, said she acted after learning that Goodridge was taking his granddaughters back to Africa.
"There was no way I could let it continue," she told The News. "I did it because I couldn't let my sister's children go through that."
Prosecutors say Harris lured Goodridge to her apartment two years ago, handcuffed him to a chair and stuck a towel in his mouth. He choked to death.
Harris told the court she cut off his penis with a scalpel and cooked the evidence after researching the John Bobbitt case and discovering organs can be reattached.
"I don't know why I didn't take the towel out of his mouth," she said of Goodridge. "I didn't want him to hurt anybody else."
Harris said that she has met lots of women in jail who have told her their tales of parental sexual abuse.
"I try to tell them that if they did it to you, they could do it to someone else," she said.
Harris said she told her sister, her aunts and other relatives about Goodridge's abuse, but they refused to believe her.
One aunt, she said, told her, "No matter what he did, he's still your father."
"The people who did know me should have known I wasn't lying," she said. "They knew me. They knew I wasn't that type."
Harris said she wishes now she had gone to someone other than family members for help.
"You can't run away from it," she said. "You have to tell somebody. I was anti-social."
Defense attorney Arthur Aidala, who represented Harris pro bono, said seven jurors have written Supreme Court Justice Arthur Cooperman, asking him to sentence her to time served so she can get psychiatric help.
"I've spoken to judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys, and nobody has ever heard of jurors doing this," he said.
Harris said she's not sure what she will tell the judge, but she says she hopes her case will shed more light on sex abuse in the home.
"People need to start talking about it," she said. "People don't want to believe it happens. It's too gruesome."
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/11/05/2009-11-05_bobbitt_case_.html
Let me guess. Her cooking class favorite dish: Franks and beans.
That is just wrong...... on so many levels.
"Franks and Beans.....Franks and Beans!"
Vin au Coc
Her cooking class is members only.
I have absolutely no sympathy for the father and I don't blame her in the least for what she did. This should be a self defense case along with an issue of mental competence on her part if he started raping her at 3. She needs a good lawyer to appeal this.
>”Vin au Coc”
Ok. Who’s bringing the wine?
If her story is true and her father really was a child rapist, she is a hero, in my book.
The law should be changed so that ALL child rapist have done to them, what she did to him. The state should hire her to perform the procedure.
Wait - she cooked it with some Fava beans and a nice Chianti
That's not self defense.
She could be English.
...perhaps she was cooking Spotted Dick?
It is if he was sexually assaulting her since she was three years old, sexually assaulted her daughters, and was possibly doing the same thing to his other granddaughters. Now her methods may not be logical but when you go through that, you don’t think straight. Self defense doesn’t need to be an immediate reaction to a thread, it has also been used in cases when there is a pattern of abuse and someone attempts to break that pattern if they believe there is no other recourse.
Ditto.
I also have no sympathy for child rapists, especially fathers. Close relative had this happen to her.
HOWEVER, I have seen no evidence that he did any such thing other than her statement.
Not every man who is accused of child molestation is guilty. Had a close friend accused of this and I’m quite convinced he was completely innocent.
Accusations of this type are very nearly impossible to definitively prove or disprove.
Didn’t John Bobbitt have his name legally changed to “Les Johnson”?
“Defense attorney Arthur Aidala, who represented Harris pro bono...”
Not. Going. To....
Must. Resist...
CAN’T!
You’d better win this one, Arthur, or you could be sans bono!
I’m not convinced there’s a legal concept of premeditated self-defense, but I’m not an attorney.
We’ve heard one side of the story. We’ll never hear the other side.
Obviously I’m not presuming she’s lying and I’m not saying the father never committed crimes; I only have the limited information presented in this article. I’m sure if there was a possibility of proving self-defense (an affirmative defense) at trial, it would have been raised.
As heinous as her “crime” is, I have difficulty (if she is telling the truth)not viewing her as a victim, even IF she did take the law into her own hands, in this case.
STE=Q
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.