Hanging next to Yessenia Cabello's little coffin was a green tulle ballerina dress with sparkles and cream-colored butterfly wings, a symbol of a sweet girl's dreams snuffed out in a misdirected jealous rage.

Yessenia was laid to rest this week after four short years of life. Her stay-at-home, unemployed father shot his little girl.

Jissela Cabello never checked on her daughter when she got home to find her husband threatening to kill her with a knife in hand. She just took off with him to get cigarettes, then escaped in a cab and called police to say she needed an escort to move out.

When officers arrived at the apartment, they found Victor Cabello had killed his daughter and himself. He had returned home apparently furious, police say, that his stripper wife had admitted to cheating on him that morning with a married man at an Eighth Street motel.

THE CAREER

I keep asking myself, if Jissela Cabello were a homemaker, a maid, a secretary, a lawyer, a farmworker -- anything but a dancer at a club that advertises online as ''full nude, full friction, full kitchen . . . all the way to 5 in the morning'' -- would I feel the same way?

Because Jissela, who now is fighting to stay in this country, doesn't elicit the goodwill that a top student, like Juan Gomez, has earned from Congress, which passed a bill to give him a one year reprieve. His parents were deported to Colombia last year and his immigration status remains in jeopardy even though the South Florida honors student is now studying at Georgetown.

Or the sympathy earned by Meynardo Garcia, the talented Mexican teen artist from Broward who an immigration judge allowed to stay in the country for six months while he tries to get his green card.

I keep searching my soul for the sympathy every mother deserves for having to bury her child. Intellectually, I can list a host of reasons why Jissela Cabello would qualify as a battered woman, but in my heart there's a knot that's stone cold.

I keep reminding myself of all the cases I've covered of domestic violence, all the women I've met who stayed around and let their men beat them because they felt powerless. Jissela Cabello had called police only a couple of weeks before to report Victor was abusing her. Then, she posted bail for him. Classic.

And I know, too, that many of the women who ''dance'' on poles, who work at escort services or turn tricks on the street were abused as children. So yes, there is reason to suspect that Jissela has not lived a charmed life.

THE COUPLE

At 25, Jissela had been with Victor for 12 years. He was 22 and she was 13 when they met in their homeland of Paraguay. Here, such a relationship would be statutory rape.

Victor's death has left Jissela in a legal limbo. He had a green card and was waiting for his U.S. citizenship. Her only legal hope is to get permanent residency through a special visa offered to victims of domestic abuse.

Her immigration lawyer, Jorge Rivera, told me Thursday that he's waiting for police to fill out the paperwork to qualify her as a victim. He said dancing was the only job she could find to support her family.

''This woman has been through the most traumatic experience that a woman can go through,'' Rivera said. ``Basically, after that experience, to make her suffer more for the job that she had is very difficult. . . . Nothing she could have done could be interpreted to bring this upon her.''

Really?

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