Roberts: The horrifying life and horrifying death of Ame Deal

You go because you want to see the box that served first as a home for Barbie dolls, then as an instrument for discipline, then as a casket.

You go because the way this little girl lived – and died – has slipped from public view but should never slip from the public’s memory

You go because even though the story is well known, internationally known, it remains difficult to fathom.

And so you go to a mostly empty Maricopa County courtroom, where the hideous story of the life and death of Ame Lynn Deal is being replayed one final time. Ame’s father, her grandmother and an aunt who served as her legal guardian already have been sent to prison for making her life a living hell. Her cousin, Sammantha Allen, is on death row.

Now Sammantha’s husband, John Allen, is on trial and facing a possible death sentence.

Some knew of abuse - and did nothing

Ten-year-old Ame lived in southwest Phoenix with a dozen children and assorted relatives in a dirty house that reeked of urine, in a neighborhood that was filled with people, some of whom would later admit that they’d witnessed the abuse of Ame. They just never did anything about it.

Reports paint a picture of a little girl who was robbed of her childhood long before she was robbed of her life. Picked on by most everyone in that house. Beaten, chained like a dog, forced to sleep in a bathtub.

And regularly stuffed into that trunk that once held her sister’s Barbie doll collection until the collection grew too big to fit in the box.

But apparently the box – 31 inches long by 15½ inches wide by 13 inches deep – never became too small to hold Ame, who was 51 inches tall and just days from her 11th birthday in July 2011.

Punished for hours, for a Popsicle

On the final night of her life, Ame was punished for hours for the horrifying crime of being caught with a Popsicle. The frozen treats had been given to several of the children but some of the adults were upset that Ame got one.

So naturally, they forced her to stand in a back-bend for three hours, pulling the crying child back into the position every time she fell. Then came the jumping jacks.

By 1 a.m., it was apparently time for the real punishment. According to court testimony, John Allen ordered Ame into the worn black box. Then he padlocked it with a key. Then he went to bed.

Ame’s body was found the next morning.

ROBERTS:Remember Ame Deal, Arizona. Don't look away

On Monday, Dr. Philip Keen, the county’s former chief medical examiner, told jurors that Ame suffocated after “being stuffed inside this box.” He showed jurors how Ame would have fit into the box, wedging an Ame-sized cloth doll into an exact replica of the box in which she died.

Keen gave a clinical account of a 10-year-old lying dead in a box, her knees pulled up to her chest, her head forced down to her chest, her hands frozen into the vague shape of claws. He explained how she would have struggled to breathe before finally (mercifully) passing out.

The lesson: Don't look the other way

As you listen and look at that hideous trunk, you try to imagine what Ame’s final moments were like. To be jammed into a too-small space, to struggle to get air, to get OUT, and then to hear that click. To realize that you are locked in with no way out and dependent on people who don't give a damn about you, or you wouldn't be here, stuffed into a box that soon will become a coffin.

This because you had a Popsicle.

After Ame’s death, neighbors said they suspected all along that something was going on in that house. They spoke of children being outside at all hours. They spoke of angry words and cruel punishments, of Ame being ordered to walk barefoot on the hot pavement of the street in front of her house.

But they looked the other way.

Which is why I’ve been sitting in a mostly empty courtroom over the last few days, to hear the gruesome story once again.

You and I can't fathom a world in which a child can be locked in a box to die. But Ame's world is the real world for far too many children. Even now there are Ames among us, enduring the unimaginable.

And we dare not look the other way.

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