Houston- One of Calvin Murphy’s daughters choked back tears [yesterday] as she told jurors that the retired Houston Rockets star repeatedly molested her at his Sugar Land home when she was about 10 years old.
“He’d start feeling me underneath my clothes,” the daughter, now 25, testified on the second day of Murphy’s trial. “And he’d start feeling himself while he was doing it to me.”
She was the first of five daughters expected to testify against Murphy, 56, who is charged with three counts each of indecency with a child and aggravated sexual assault.
Several jurors cringed and looked away as the woman said the abuse occurred “more than 20 times” during her fifth-grade year. Each time, she said, she pretended to be asleep for fear of angering her father.
The incidents took place when she stayed overnight at Murphy’s suburban home, she said. She lived full-time at her mother’s Houston home.
If convicted, the former NBA All-Star and TV commentator could face a sentence ranging from probation to life in prison.
Murphy has 14 children by nine women. All five daughters accusing him were born to women he never married.
Murphy’s attorneys say the daughters are lying to seek money and revenge. They resent their father because he never treated them as well as the three children born to his ex-wife, Vernetta Murphy, defense attorney Rusty Hardin said.
The daughter said she was terrified to tell anyone about the alleged sexual abuse. She said that after one of her older sisters spoke up about similar abuse, Murphy took the girl to a residential psychiatric hospital.
“I was scared I’d end up like my sister and get put in a crazy home,” the woman testified.
Another daughter told authorities in her home state of Connecticut in 1995 that Murphy had sexually abused her, but she later recanted. She has since renewed her allegation.
During that 1995 investigation, a Fort Bend County social worker interviewed several of Murphy’s children who lived in Houston. The daughter who testified Monday said her mother, one of Murphy’s longtime girlfriends, urged her to deny any sexual abuse.
“I thought I’d get in trouble. I thought she’d be mad at me,” the daughter said.
She also told jurors that when she and Murphy’s other children who were born out of wedlock were younger, they were pressured to keep their father’s identity a secret.
When prosecutor Paula Storts asked about her siblings, she was able to name 10 and then said, “There’s a couple others. I don’t know their names.”
When Storts asked why she decided to speak out after so long, the woman gave several reasons, including that she is now a parent, too.
“I just had a daughter, and if it happened to her, I’d hurt somebody,” she said. “And I’d sit there and see (Murphy) on TV, smiling as if nothing was wrong.”