Judge Excludes Testimony of 4-Year-Old : Hearing: The child was the only witness to an alleged beating of her twin brother. He suffered severe brain damage.

So small that most courtroom observers could see only her blond curls in the box as she testified, the sole witness to an alleged beating that left her twin brother severely brain damaged squirmed Wednesday as a prosecutor tried to coax her into telling what she saw. She is 4.

Jessica Thivener sang into the microphone, asked for her mother and said, “I want to see Jason.” She looked at pictures of Jason, her brother who is in a vegetative state--perhaps permanently--from his injuries. She occasionally glanced toward Fateheen Rahman, the man charged with attempted murder in the alleged beating.

But she seemed afraid. She wouldn’t tell Deputy Dist. Atty. Lea Purwin D’Agostino what she, and she alone, had seen, despite the prosecutor’s gentle questions.

“Jason’s sleeping,” Jessica said before trying to run from the witness stand. “Is Jason hurt?” D’Agostino prodded, and the child replied “yes.”

But when asked how Jason was hurt, Jessica said, “I don’t want to tell.”

Her reluctance left Van Nuys Municipal Judge Jessica Perrin Silvers little choice but to exclude the child’s testimony. Nevertheless, following a daylong preliminary hearing, Silvers held Rahman--who says Jason hurt himself by falling against a coffee table--for trial on attempted murder and child endangerment charges.

Later, away from the courtroom and safe in the arms of her mother, Jessica again was asked what happened to Jason. “Fateheen,” she said, grabbing a toy clown by the neck and hurling it forcefully to the floor.

Silvers ordered Rahman, a 22-year-old native of Bangladesh, held on $500,000 bail. She also ordered him not to call or write the twins’ mother, Tammi Thivener, 25, of Van Nuys.

Outside the courtroom, Thivener said she blames herself for leaving her children with Rahman because she was suddenly called in to work at the department store where he was a co-worker.

She had planned to marry him, she said, but “I don’t have any feelings for him right now. I can’t believe that someone so loving, so nice, could do something so horrible.”

Paramedic Dennis Archie testified that Rahman told him that the children had been playing and that Jason stopped breathing when Jessica sat on him. Archie also testified that he saw Rahman “strike the baby with his fists, harder than you or I would.”

Los Angeles Police Detective Irene Frizzell testified that Jessica had earlier told her that Rahman had choked them. The child first demonstrated by putting her hands around the detective’s neck, Frizzell testified. Later, she grabbed a Barbie doll by the neck and threw it to the floor, Frizzell said.

Frizzell testified that the day after Jason was injured, when she interviewed Rahman in the Van Nuys jail, he “was crying and distraught.” He told her then that on the day of the injury, he was tired and was trying to sleep on the couch, but the children were crying. He said he spanked them, and that made them cry more. The detective said he told her that he shook Jason, who broke free and accidentally banged his head on a marble coffee table.

Because of his brain injury, Jason will probably spend the rest of his life “in a vegetative state,” and his prognosis for recovery is “grim,” testified Dr. Antonio Galvis, a pediatrician at Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles. The 4-year-old underwent surgery for the second time Tuesday, so doctors could install a permanent shunt to drain from his skull the fluid that gathers there because of his injuries.

Galvis, who was on duty at the hospital when Jason arrived by helicopter June 12, said the boy’s brain was swelling so quickly his life was in danger.

Jason was bruised on the left side of his head, neck, face and ear. Tiny blood vessels in his face had ruptured, indicating he’d been choked, Galvis said.

Questioned by defense attorney Richard S. Plotin, Galvis said he doubted Jason received his injuries by falling against a coffee table. He said the boy’s injuries were the type he usually sees “only in the ones who fall from buildings or are in automobile accidents.”

Outside of court, Thivener said she holds her son for hours at the hospital. It’s the only thing that seems to calm his whimpering.

Even though he cannot respond to stimuli and is in a vegetative state, “He’s lying there, his eyes are open, and he’s crying,” said Thivener. “I know he’s in pain, that he feels everything, every poke,” she said. “He needs a miracle. They said he’d die. For him to still be alive is a miracle.”

Plotin said outside court that Rahman felt so remorseful that Jason was injured under his care that he wrote Jason a letter. “He expressed his remorse and said he was sorry. He said he loved Jason and hopes he gets better,” the lawyer said.

“He feels devastated and ashamed,” Plotin said. “He never intended any injury. This is a tragedy for everybody concerned.”

Said Thivener: “Maybe he didn’t mean to do it, but he still did it.”