Now wait begins for teen mother, wife
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By COLLEEN KENNEY / Lincoln Journal Star
FALLS CITY — Crystal Koso had feared the pain.
She’d heard the war stories from women, knew what to expect at the end of nine months.
Crying. Screaming, maybe. Passing out from the pain.
“But it wasn’t so bad once the epidural kicked in,” she says now, smiling.
She’s in the living room of a yellow bungalow across from a park. It’s the Koso home, the home of her husband’s family. Her home now.
She sits on a recliner with the baby on her lap. Samara. They call her Sam and Sammy. She wears pink velveteen overalls and new white shoes. She’s sucking her fists.
Today is scary, Crystal says, because she doesn’t know what to expect.
She turns to her husband’s mom.
“What if I forget what I’m supposed to say?”
“Don’t worry,” Peggy Koso says. “You’ll remember.”
Crystal Koso is 15 now. She will speak before a judge later this morning on behalf of her 23-year-old husband, Matt Koso, a convicted sex offender because he got her pregnant with Sammy.
Today is the sentencing. She will tell the judge he didn’t rape her. It was love. Still is. And marriage.
Matt is up at the courthouse. He left in his pickup a little bit ago, wanted to get there early to avoid all the cameras and reporters.
“Well, I guess I’ll see you guys up there,” he had told them. He wore a black suit and a NASCAR tie.
It’s 9:30 now. The sentencing is at 10.
This is a big story, Crystal says. People from London and New York have come here to the house. She knows what to expect now from the reporters. People shouting questions in her face.
She knows what to expect from people in town. Most have been pretty good to her.
But she doesn’t know what to expect from the judge today.
Maybe if he hears her it’ll help. Maybe if he sees the baby.
Sammy is 5 months old. Her hair is dark blond like Crystal’s and maybe will have the curls, too. There’s a curl forming on top.
Crystal kisses the curl and breathes in the baby smell. She doesn’t show her fear.
Peggy is breathing fast. She sighs a lot.
She double-knotted the baby’s white shoes.
The men don’t say much. John Koso, her husband’s father. Nick Koso, her husband’s brother who came all the way from Wichita even though his wife’s about to have a baby.
He cut Matt’s hair last night, to make it look good for today.
Crystal gets up with the baby and moves to the couch. She puts on her coat.
“OK, We’re going to go bye-bye.”
She straps Sammy into the padded carrier they got from Big Lots. Sammy shakes a rattle, then drops it. Crystal doesn’t bring toys that make noise because the judge might not like it.
“I’m ready,” she says in a baby voice, pretending Sammy is the one talking.
Richardson County Courthouse
The elevator is hot.
The door opens to a hallway, where cameras begin to snap. She pulls the blanket over Sammy’s head.
Her mother holds Sammy.
Inside a back room, she sees Matt. He’s crying into a paper towel. He grabs her and cries into her hair, breathing hard.
The room is hot.
A woman sticks her head in the door. “About five minutes.”
“It’s OK,” Crystal tells Matt. “It’s OK.”
She sits between Aunt Julie and her best friend, Danielle Vollmer, in the second row behind Matt’s parents and brother.
Sammy is asleep. Crystal’s mom, Cece, holds her a few rows back on the other side.
Crystal stands up when it’s time.
“I’m Crystal Koso. I am supposedly the victim.”
She tells the judge she’s loved Matt before she got pregnant with their daughter and she still loves him now. She tells him that putting Matt away wouldn’t benefit her or their daughter any.
Maybe if you send my husband to jail, she says, you’ll see my daughter here in this courthouse in about 15 years — because she didn’t have a father around.
Her cheeks are pink when she sits back down.
Crystal watches as the judge has Matt read and sign a piece of paper that says he’s a sex offender.
She hears Matt sob. His hands shake now as he wipes his eyes.
As far as I’m concerned, she hears the judge say, the law of Nebraska is the law of Nebraska and a child is a child and needs to be protected and this idea of love doesn’t fit into it.
She hears him say that a marriage can’t cover up the crime and only two adults can make the decision, otherwise it’s just a wish and a hope. He says Matt has a history of trying to date other underage girls and violated the protection order her own mom had sought.
She hears the judge say 18 to 30 months — subject to parole in half that time.
Nine months, he says.
Jury room in the back
Crystal hugs Matt, who stands by a window.
“Oh god, oh god,” Matt says. “I love you.”
His family gathers around.
Crystal hugs him hard and kisses his head. He’s so much taller than she is.
Then Matt falls to his knees.
Crystal tries to hold him up.
But she can’t.
He falls to the floor.
They roll him over.
His eyes are shut.
The sheriff hurries over and tries to calm him. Take deep breaths, he says. OK, Matt?
“Nothing is going to help me now. I’m going to die while I’m up there.”
“No, you’re not,” Crystal says. She’s kneeling beside him.
Paramedics come.
Matt sits in a chair. He calms down.
He reaches for Sammy.
Walking to the car
Her mom is on one side, her best friend on the other.
They hold Crystal up as they make their way along the sidewalk north of the courthouse.
The baby is with Peggy.
She told Peggy in the jury room that she was going to stay at her mom’s trailer a few days instead of with them.
Crystal and her friend are going shopping this afternoon. Her friend has 52 bucks from her tax return and wants to spend it all on Crystal to cheer her up.
They’ll buy some good cigarettes, the friend says. They’ll go shopping somewhere and buy some baby clothes. Something cute.
You’ve been pregnant nine months, Crystal’s mom keeps reminding her. You know what nine months are like.
Yeah, she says. I know.
But when she was pregnant, she says, she knew what to expect.
Reach Colleen Kenney at 473-2655 or ckenney@journalstar.com.
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