House of Secrets (15 page)

Shelly complained, if she didn’t eat, why should she do the damn dishes? hoatits was on his way up the stairs when he heard his niece say, He slapped her once in the face. “You know, later I really regretted it,” Otis would later say. “But we were all under a lot of pressure. It was just one of those momentary reactions.” Machelle Sexton stomped down the stairs and walked out the front door. Otis watched her from his porch. She was walking down 15th Street, hand. _

l her handbag swinging in her Melton Fletcher had worked in Indian affairs since the federal government began helping Native Americans relocate from reservations to urban areas in the 1950s. Half Choctaw, an Oklahoma tribe, he’d been a licensed social worker at the cultural center since 1978. He was 70 years old. Fletcher had investigated scores of claims from people purporting to be Indians. The status often meant federal assistance and special rights under treaty law. Ed Sexton wasn’t the first con man he’d dealt with who claimed to be of Indian blood. “He was a wheeler dealer,” Fletcher would later say.

“He was a manipulator, all the way.” Both Sexton and his wife were maintaining they were Cherokee. Fletcher had traced the lineage of each and found none of their relatives listed in Cherokee Nation records in the Minneapolis office of the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs. Later, Fletcher would recall making an appearance before Family Court Judge Julie Edwards. Ed Sexton rolled into court that day in a wheelchair. Fletcher had talked with Sexton four times previously, but he’d never shown any sign of disability. Fletcher said he told the court that the family had no record of Native American blood. But on July 23, the same day Machelle Sexton walked away from Otis Sexton’s house, it appears that Mel Fletcher had assumed a different role. Machelle had walked to a local liquor store and called her mother at the house on Caroline Street. “She told me she was divorcing my father, that she was going to get all the kids back,”

Machelle later recalled. “She kept telling me she loved me.” Machelle told her that her uncle had slapped her. “I’m going to send someone to get you,” May Sexton said. Soon a car arrived at the store. In it were Mel Fletcher and a friend he’d brought along for company. In a later interview, Fletcher would acknowledge that he knew the family dynamics, the rape allegations, some of the charges of abuse. Yet, he took Machelle Sexton back to the house on Caroline. The only explanation he could offer was, “We have to, as a social worker, comply, as long as that person is not in danger.” But Machelle Sexton clearly could be in danger. Ed Sexton was still living there. Clark Hosik, the center’s director, later would try to explain. The only thing I can recall of the situation is Mel felt really bad for the kids and he wanted to help them. Once you get into that mode of trying to keep families together, well, he didn’t realize the depth of the problems there.” As Fletcher drove toward Jackson Township, his companion Barbara Booth looked in the backseat and said, “I think we have a problem.” She appeared to be having a seizure. When they reached the house on Caroline Street, Fletcher noticed two boys fishing down by the pond. One was Patrick Sexton, the other his cousin, Willard. Patrick approached the car and looked in. “Oh, it’s just Shelly,” Patrick said. Later Patrick recalled, “She looked like she was faking it. Her eyes fluttering and all that.” May Sexton came out, peeking in the car. Fletcher suggested the mother call an ambulance.

“It was pretty unbelievable,” Barbara Booth would later recall “The mother didn’t even seem to react. Here was this girl, out of it, and she was talking about what a nice day it was outside.” EMS records would later show the ambulance arrived at 8,38 p. m. Machelle told paramedics she’d been struck and thrown up against a wall by her uncle.

She’d been throwing up, she said. But months later, Machelle Sexton would say the real reason she was ill was an anxiety attack. “I kept thinking on the way over, am I doing the right thing? I knew something was wrong. My mother was saying she loved me, and she just never said that.” The paramedics loaded Machelle onto a stretcher. Fletcher later claimed he told EMS workers to make sure she got into a group home after the hospital. But there was no mention of those instructions on the EMS records. They took Machelle to Massillon Community Hospital where she was examined. When she was released, May Sexton was waiting to take her home. The affidavit made its way to Jackson police and DHS attorneys. It was handwritten and signed, notarized on September 1, 1992, and read, I Shelly Sexton of 8149

Caroline … do here by (sic) state that I did not make any of the allegations that was (sic) brought against my father. To have the younger kids taken from the home, my uncle was talking to the kids one by one in his bedroom. He told them to say they will get to come home soon. My uncle is doing this because he is jealous of my father and always will be. Simply, Machelle Sexton had recanted. She’d lived with her mother a month, then moved in with Pixie and Joel in Bolivar, then left there after her father ordered Pixie to put her out. Now she was living with one of her women’s shelter friends. i Later, Shelly would explain what happened. Her first night home, she’d slept in her mother’s bedroom. Her father had moved out the day she came home. May Sexton also was telling the DHS that her husband had moved out. She’d told her oldest son Patrick they were getting divorced. But Machelle feared her father would return to the house. Her mother asked her if it was true. Had her father raped her? “Yes,” she said. “She said, Machelle, I love you.

I’m glad you did what you did. Now I just want to get you kids back.”

” She moved back into her own bedroom. But voices downstairs woke her a couple nights later. She came down the stairs into the dark living room. Above her father’s chair, she saw the glow of a cigarette.

“That’s when I knew my mother had lied to me. She was still seeing him. He sat there for a minute, then it began. What he always said, Girls disappear every day.” We put you on this earth. We can take you oœ’ ” Ed Sexton gestured toward the pond and said, “Machelle, there’s a lot of lake out there.” Machelle recalled, “I had no place to stay. I had nowhere to go.” He came every night, not always after midnight.

Sometimes he brought dinner for her mother, meals he’d picked up or cooked at the camper. Willie picked him up. Other times he’d bring his own car, parking it in the closed garage. Her father composed the notarized letter, she said. Her mother handed it to her and asked her to copy it exactly in her own handwriting. Then her mother drove her down to the office of her attorney, Pat Menicos. “I just sat there,”

she said. “He asked me if I wanted to say anything. I just shook my head, no.” Detective Glenn Goe went to the Massillon prosecutor’s office with his file on Machelle Sexton’s rape. He had no physical evidence, no medical exam and no direct corroborating testimony, he told an assistant prosecutor. He had a good polygraph. But, one more thing, he’d heard the victim had recanted. “Not a chance,” the city attorney said. The entire DHS case also was in jeopardy. With the Indian issue resolved, a hearing was scheduled at the end of September to decide the custody of the Sexton children. Judee Genetin’s staff scrambled to amend the language of their complaint, saying Shelly had alleged abuse, but later recanted. Otis Sexton told everyone he wasn’t buying the news that Eddie had actually left May. He suspected it was a ploy to get the children back. He knew Eddie liked to take the family camping in the summer in an old Winnebago the family once owned.

Otis drove up to Portage Lake State Park, in Medina County near Akron.

He’d heard Eddie had borrowed a camping trailer from his brother Orville, who lived in Canton. At the campground he spotted his older brother’s trailer. Willie was at the sink in the window. Eddie’s two-tone yellow van was outside. He called Wayne Welsh. Despite his protest, DHS workers were starting to see Otis as a valuable source.

Ed Sexton had left Stark County, all right, he said, but he was only 10

minutes from home. “How did you know he was there?” the social worker asked. “I know Eddie,” Otis said. Social workers started checking on the house. Genetin would later recall, “Mom and dad were playing the system. Now, we believed they weren’t following the no-contact order, but we couldn’t prove it, even though we were sending people out there all hours of the day and night to see if dad was there.” At the September 28 hearing, May Sexton told the court she’d been in therapy, and that her own counselor had recommended some of her children be returned. Based on the fact that Christopher and Kimberly had denied all allegations of abuse and the father was out of the home, Judge Julie Edwards returned the two children to the mother. She also awarded May Sexton custody of Charles. He was nearly 18, and still being reported as “on the run” by the DHS. Four days later, Judee Genetin was back in court. DHS staff had spoken to May Sexton’s counselor. He said he’d recommended no such thing. The mother had not attended enough sessions, the counselor said. But Judge Edwards stuck by her decision. With the father out of the home, any prior threat was minimized, she said. “The judge was going to send somebody home,”

Genetin would later recall. “Basically, the court told us that mom appears to be doing what she’s supposed to do, seeing a counselor, not having contact with dad. And nobody is really saying mom is the bad actor. Dad is the bad actor. Mom is protecting them. Mom wants her children back. We’re going to reward Mom for what she’s doing, and who do you want it to be? “So my choice was Kimberly and Christopher.

They hadn’t disclosed, so they, one, weren’t going to get in trouble if Dad was in fact there. Two, they did not appear to have been abused.

From everything we were gathering, the mother seemed to protect them, Soon, Charles “Skipper” Sexton returned from Indiana, moving back in with his mother. Then, a month after the hearing, social workers found themselves investigating a new referral. Lana Sexton, while in foster care, was attending a sex abuse victim group. In a therapy session, she’d disclosed that Charles had raped her in the bathroom of the family home. A social worker named Tracey Harlin was assigned to investigate. She interviewed Lana, age 12. Lana said she was worried about Skipper being home with her younger sister, Kimberly, age 8.

Skipper liked to play a sex game she called “The Statue of Liberty Game.

Skipper raped her, she said. James and Matthe had witnessed it, watching from a ladder, looking in the bathroom window. She said her mother had beaten Skipper when her brothers told her about the assault.

It was consistent with accounts given months ago. Harlin asked Lana about abuse by her father. Lana Sexton lost all expression on her face and her eyes went blank. Then the girl began to digress. She started talking about demonic movies, Satanic rituals, voodoo dolls, and candles. Then she mentioned an upside-down cross and her father in a hooded robe. Three days later, Tracey Harlin interviewed Kimberly, now 8, at school. She’d not been abused, she said. No, she hadn’t seen her Harlin noted, “Kim was quiet and appeared very non-wsting and gave smooth answers like she had been coached. Later that day, Harlin and James Sexton showed up at the Jackson Township Police Department.

James was 16 and in his junior year at a high school near his foster home. The DHS wanted to document his witness statement with police.

If Charles Sexton had indeed raped Lana, Skipper would face criminal charges as well. Before the interview, Harlin told Detective Glenn Goe that James, the boy who’d been locked in the dark room as an infant, suffered from autism. Goe put the interview on tape. James said Skipper’s assault on Lana had taken place two months before they were all removed from the home. “How did you find out about this to begin with?” Goe asked “Well, I heard about it,” James said. “I heard everybody talking about it. I knew about it. Then my mom beat him up for it.”

“What did she do?”

“Bent him over a sink and started scratching him, punching him, slapping him. Choking him.”

“Did you see Skipper rape your sister?”

“No.”

“Do you think he did?”

“Probably ..

. My sister was crying when she told my dad.”

“Did Lana ever tell you?”

“Yeah. She said he stuck his wiener up her butt.” Goe asked, “Did Skipper ever do anything like that to you?”

“Yes.”

“When was that?”

“About two months before foster care.”

“What happened?”

“He asked me to come upstairs for a couple minutes while I was watching television. I went up there. He says, I’ll offer you this watch if you lay on the bed and let me do something to you.” I laid down on the bed. He told me to pull down my pants. Then he got on top of me and raped me.”

“What did he do?”

“He stuck his wiener up my butt.”

“Did you want this to happen to you?” James eyes widened. “No,” he said. For a brief second anger crept into his voice. It was the only emotion he would show during the entire session. James said Skipper raped Christopher later that night. He witnessed it, he said.

Christopher didn’t seem to put up a struggle. Chris later denied what happened to James. “He said I was imagining things,” James said. “Why would he say that?” Goe asked. “Because I was a little bit retarded, he thought I was seeing things.”

Goe asked him about the “Statue of Liberty Game.” James explained, “Charles was standing up like the Statue of Liberty. He went downstairs, got my two sisters, came back up. Stand again. And he let my two sisters suck his wiener. “When was that?”

“A couple of years ago.”

“Which two sisters?”

“Lana and Kimberly.”

“Did he make them do that?”

“No.”