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She was 7 when she told her mother that Grandma Esther molested her and another cousin her age, that Grandma Esther shot up heroin and tried to get her to shoot up, too.

That Grandma Esther did bad things no grandma is supposed to do.

She is 10 now, and so far there has been no trial for Grandma Esther, no justice and no peace from the bitter feud between family members who believe the girl and those who believe she was forced into a lie.

"This has been a nightmare," said the girl's mother, Denise Lovato, and the woman blamed by those on Grandma Esther's side for planting the sordid story in the girl's head. "My daughter is strong, stronger than me, but it's still been a very vicious thing, all this waiting."

Grandma Esther, whose full name is Mary Esther Lovato, has been waiting, too, locked up at the Metropolitan Detention Center since her arrest April 26, 2005, on a dozen charges, including three counts of criminal sexual penetration of a minor.

That kind of waiting in that kind of place accused of the kind of crime even inmates detest has been just as nightmarish for Lovato, 58, her family said.

"It has been hard. She's been punished. They have been cruel to her. People have hurt her in there," said her sister, Nila Lopez. "They say you're innocent until proven guilty — well, it's been the opposite for her."

By the time the case goes to trial in late March, Mary Lovato, innocent or guilty, will have been in jail a month shy of three years.

In that time, her case has been set for trial 12 times.

Cases involving children always take time, but Lovato's case has been prolonged even further over questions of her competency, substitutions of lawyers on both sides and Lovato's insistence that her case not be pleaded out.

"She has stuck to her guns," said her attorney, Troy Prichard, whose relative newness to the case was posited as the latest reason to delay her trial, which was to have occurred last week. "She has maintained her innocence. People lie. Cops lie. She's fine with waiting for trial."

Prichard was assigned the case last July after Lovato angrily demanded that her previous public defender be fired over his insistence that she accept what seemed a sweet plea deal rather than stand trial.

Three times, she has rejected plea deals that would have ended her jail misery and freed her almost instantly — provided she was willing to plead guilty, be placed on probation for up to 20 years and register as a sex offender.

If convicted at trial, she would also face up to 54 years in prison.

"She's not going to take that plea. She's never going to take a plea," her sister said. "She's innocent. Why should she?"

Lovato, she said, would rather rot in a jail cell than confess to a crime she didn't commit.

She'd also rather put her granddaughter on the witness stand to be unmercifully grilled, her every action and motive questioned, her character torn apart.

"She loves (her granddaughter), but she's going to make her testify," Nila Lopez said. "She feels bad about it. She cries about it. But she didn't do it."

Prosecutor Ann Demarais, the second prosecutor on the case, said she had hoped to avoid trial to spare the girl and to spare Lovato from any further time behind bars.

"But we were ready to go to trial this month as planned," she said.

Now it could be Demarais who causes another delay — she is leaving the District Attorney's Office.

"I wanted to try the case before I left," she said. "I didn't want this girl to have to get used to another prosecutor."

And get used to more delays.

Meanwhile, Denise Lovato said her daughter remains just as determined as Grandma Esther to go to trial, no matter how long it takes.

"My daughter tells me, 'Don't worry, Mom. God knows,' " she said. " 'When Grandma sees me, that's when everything is going to change. God is going to let everybody know what happened.' "

By that time, with memories blunted and nerves frayed, God might be the only credible witness left.