Roseland man convicted of sexually assaulting relative for over a decade

For over a decade, Craig Hartfield tried to keep his four young female relatives away from the world outside his nondescript two-flat row house in Roseland.

For years, the house only had a landline phone, used almost exclusively for calls to family members or for Hartfield to track down work. The two oldest girls were pulled out of school in eighth grade, the younger two by sixth or seventh. By their teens, the girls seldom left the house, and when they did, Hartfield was almost always at their side.

But Hartfield’s protectiveness was not about about shielding the children from corruption and danger, Assistant State’s Attorney Krista Peterson said Thursday in her closing arguments at Hartfield’s bench trial on sexual assault charges stemming from sexual abuse of one relative that spanned 15 years.

While Hartfield was on trial for assaulting one victim, all four relatives took the stand against him over the four-day bench trial.

Perhaps even more damning was DNA experts’ testimony that Hartfield fathered two children of his two victims, who testified they were abused starting at the age of 9 until they fled the home in their 20s.

The babies were delivered, a few months apart, in the back of Hartfield’s car, parked in an abandoned bus depot. The children did not see a doctor until years later, after their mothers escaped to a Northwest Side shelter with their children and the other two young women they had lived with.

Citing the “chilling” testimony, Judge Charles Burns found Hartfield guilty of predatory criminal sexual assault and aggravated sexual assault charges.

“I cannot understand or appreciate the abuse that occurred in that household, that house of horrors, that was perpetrated over a decade on these girls, these young girls,” the judge said. “While [the testimony] may be outrageous, it’s credible.”

Hartfield faces between 30 and 120 years in prison. The 50-year-old is still awaiting trial in two other cases, involving his other young victim and another woman, also a relative.

Hartfield, jailed since his 2017 arrest, had refused to speak to his lawyers for months, communicating with written notes, exaggerated nods and frequent scowls.

The abuse started with Hartfield fondling the two oldest girls in their bedroom at night, and, when they turned 11 or 12, he started raping them, prosecutors said. One woman recalled Hartfield raping her when no one else was home, taking her into a bathroom after lecturing her about drawing attention to herself and dressing provocatively.

“He asked me if this was what I wanted, if this was how I was dressing, this was what I was going to get,” the woman testified earlier in the week as Hartfield scribbled notes.

In his closing argument, Hartfield’s assistant public defender, Dylan Barrett, said that women’s accounts were “vague” and questioned how they could have endured such abuse for so long with no one noticing, or without reaching out for help. Their claims of abuse, first made to police a year after they had fled, were in retaliation because they were upset over their strict upbringing, Barrett suggested, adding that investigators did not get DNA samples from other male relatives who might have fathered the two children.

Peterson countered that Hartfield’s threats and abuse kept the girls from seeking help. Hartfield had warned his two victims that if they ever told anyone, their parents would be arrested and they’d land in foster care. When the girls became adults, they said they stayed because of their isolation, and their fear that Hartfield would begin assaulting younger relatives.

“They were told by [Hartfield] that if you tell, you’re going to tear this family apart. That’s terrifying for any child, but especially for a child that has little contact with the outside world,” Peterson said. “That’s all they had, this family.”