One Survivor, and Her Mother's Story
By Suzanne Hirt
In the dark hallway outside her bedroom, a man in body armor confronted Sharon with a gun.
Arms raised in surprise and surrender, she obeyed his commands.
Keep your hands up. Go to the kitchen. Face the wall.
A helicopter churned overhead, and emergency lights flashed from the yard. Were police seeking a fugitive hiding out in the thick woods around her Edgewater home?
That illusion crumbled with the clink of handcuffs closing around her wrists and dissolved completely as agents roused her daughters, Carrie and Kylie, from their rooms and secured them beside her.
Her husband, Scott, was nowhere in sight.
Police swarmed their home, searching bedrooms and sifting through clothes strewn across the floor. What they sought, Sharon didn’t know.
She had begun to suspect that something was wrong under her roof but just beyond her field of perception. In the early morning hours of Dec. 3, 2016, her fears came into focus.
Volusia County Sheriff’s Office investigators arrested Scott, a New Smyrna Beach city maintenance worker and Boy Scout leader, for molesting, recording and sharing pornographic images of Kylie — his 14-year-old daughter.
″(My husband) was doing this and that for the community, then his dark side is exposed,” said Sharon, 57, during one of several interviews. The News-Journal changed her name and the names of her family members to protect her daughter’s identity because she is a victim of sexual abuse. “To the arresting officer I said, ‘Thank you for getting me out of that hell.’”
The disturbing details that deputies revealed to Sharon that night in the backseat of a police car shed light on the source of her suspicions and propelled her toward an uncertain future.
Volusia Rape Crisis Center
24/7 Sexual Assault Helpline: 800-503-7621
Address: 311 N. Orange St., New Smyrna Beach
Therapy/support services: 386-236-3123
She would be forced to confront long-buried memories from her own traumatic childhood. She would find refuge with a close friend. She would discover that her friend, too, had survived sexual abuse, and together they would seek healing at the Volusia Rape Crisis Center.
Amidst the rising tide of the #MeToo movement — a global call to end sexual violence and support abuse victims that was sparked by a series of accusations against high-profile men — she would choose to share her story so that it might give hope to others.
But first she would have to face the truth about Kylie.
‘She wanted to protect her children’
Sheriff’s office investigator Chastity Burke was notified on Dec. 2, 2016, that her subpoena of Scott’s internet account records had been returned. She’d been up early executing a search warrant but felt compelled to go back to the office and review the files right away.
“Something in my gut told me (it was urgent),” said Burke, 40, a seven-year member of the North Florida Internet Crimes Against Children task force.
Burke started investigating Scott after the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children — a Virginia-based nonprofit that helps law enforcement nationwide to identify victims of child sexual exploitation — tipped her in late September 2016 that Scott may have uploaded to the internet several images of adult men engaged in sex acts with female children as young as 1 or 2, an arrest report shows.
Scott’s subpoenaed account files contained explicit material he had emailed to others — including images of him in the nude molesting his daughter, according to the report. It was the probable cause Burke needed to arrest Scott and search his house.
The possibility that the girl was in peril prioritized the warrants, and just after 11 p.m. that same night about 30 Special Weapons and Tactics and Child Exploitation Unit agents descended on Scott’s secluded Interstate 95-adjacent property. Scott answered the door naked, Burke said.
SWAT agents scoured the house for electronic devices and secured Scott’s family while Burke questioned him outside.
He downplayed his interactions with Kylie at first.
“He said he was trying to fit her for a bra,” Burke said. But when presented with photos printed from his email account, “he confessed to having an attraction toward his children. He was trying to groom (Kylie). He was hoping she would at some point do the things he wanted her to do.”
Kylie told detectives that her dad had shown her pornography, measured her “top and bottom” and ordered her Victoria’s Secret bras and panties, but denied he had sexually abused her. She was “upset” and “overwhelmed,” investigators said. “She seemed afraid and guarded.”
Sharon acknowledged that Scott walked around the house naked and made his kids uncomfortable but said she was unaware he had done “anything inappropriate” to Kylie, Burke said.
Sharon was adamant that if Scott harmed her girls, she would leave him. “I know she wanted to protect her children,” Burke said.
Burke would spend the next year searching Scott’s 20,000-plus emails. Among them she uncovered more pornographic images of Kylie that Scott had manufactured and sent to others. No additional local victims have been identified.
Sharon and her daughters didn’t disclose many damning details, but that didn’t matter. The proof was in the pictures.
Scared silent
Skeptics may doubt Sharon’s claim that she didn’t know what was happening in her home. Some might question Kylie’s reticence with investigators and wonder why she didn’t confide in her mother.
But such scenarios are common, said Shinece Carr, director of the Volusia Rape Crisis Center. As part of SMA Healthcare, the grant-funded crisis center provides free psychotherapy, group counseling, forensic examination support and other services for victims of sexual assault.
Parents who were sexually abused as children may see their kids showing signs of abuse but assume it’s their own trauma bubbling to the surface, Carr said — or they may be in denial. “It’s kind of like they’re reliving it for themselves when it happens to their child.”
By the time of Scott’s arrest, Sharon had suppressed for four decades the sexual trauma that blinded her to Kylie’s plight.
At age 14, a live-in adult uncle “started having sex with me,” Sharon recalled. She told a friend, and word got back to her parents. “All they did was slap him on the hand and tell him to get lost.”
The untreated trauma cast a shadow over her life and influenced her behavior, she said.
She met Scott at church when she was 18 and married him four years later in February 1985. They had two children.
More than a decade into their marriage, Scott changed, Sharon said. He spent significant time watching pornography and became “sexually aggressive,” she said. “If I’d try to get away, he would grab me.”
Scott kept katana swords on his side of the bed, Sharon said, and “I was afraid one of these days he would use (one) on me.”
Kylie was born in 2002. When she reached late elementary age, Sharon sensed a shift. Kylie clung to her and didn’t want to be left alone with Scott.
″(In hindsight), I should have caught it because it was done to me,” Sharon said. “Everyone says the woman’s got to know something. I did know something, but I didn’t know what.”
Sharon made repeated attempts to connect with her daughter, but when Sharon asked if she was troubled, ”(Kylie) would say, ‘No, I just want to be with you.’”
Abused children keep quiet for several reasons, Carr said. They may not know how to articulate what they’re experiencing. They might fear repercussions or blame themselves.
“Or sometimes they think that a parent may not believe them over another adult,” Carr said. And if the abuser is someone they know and love, “it makes it difficult for the child to say anything.”
Boys start speaking up around ages 12 or 13, and girls at 14 to 16, Carr said. Kylie had reached that range and — made easier by Scott’s extraction from her life — the truth started trickling out in therapy and during conversations with Sharon.
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| Sample of Sharon and Kylie's artworks |
Secret scars
A vandal painted the words “child molester” on the road in front of Sharon’s home with an arrow pointing toward her tree-shrouded driveway after media outlets reported Scott’s arrest.
Kylie had no safe haven. Memories of Scott’s abuse spoiled her sacred spaces. She grew withdrawn, hid herself inside hooded jackets and her mother worried she was entertaining suicidal thoughts.
She’d been an active participant in the family’s New Smyrna Beach church, where her artistic abilities were encouraged. She sang in the choir, performed interpretive dances, acted in skits and led children’s activities at summer camp.
But Scott had molested her at church, too — in between services when no one was around, and in the sound booth before concerts, Sharon said. “It was no longer a sanctuary for her.”
Sharon needed to move her daughters out of their house but didn’t have the money. Her longtime friend, Marissa, supplied a solution.
Marissa, whose name The News-Journal has changed because she also is a sex abuse survivor, was living alone in a three-bedroom house in Edgewater. When she heard about Sharon’s situation, she didn’t hesitate. “I said, ‘That’s it. You’re moving in with me,’” Marissa said.
The Volusia Rape Crisis Center helped pay for the move and purchased Kylie a new bed.
Relocation is a little-known service the center provides, but an essential one, Carr said.
“We know we can bring you for counseling 100 times and give it to you for free,” she said. “But my counselor is not going to be able to do anything for you until you feel safe.”
As Sharon and her daughters settled in with Marissa and started therapy at the crisis center, Sharon’s childhood trauma bubbled up.
During an interview with a victim advocate, she remembered afresh the hurts she had pushed down for years — the uncle in his 30s who moved in with her family, the times he raped her and his failed plan to prostitute her. She recalled the anger she felt when her parents chose not to pursue prosecution, and how she sought sex with peers as an act of rebellion.
“It was a double whammy,” Sharon said, reckoning with her daughter’s abuse as well as her own. “This is a scar deep down inside that you can’t see. Everyone that I pass, I wonder if they’re going through the same thing I am.”
Many crisis center clients are referred by law enforcement or nurses. Some, such as Sharon and Kylie, transfer from another agency when assistance is limited due to funding. And others, like Marissa, reach out directly.
Several months after Sharon’s family moved in, Marissa was flipping through old photos and came across one that “unlocked a memory,” she said. “All of a sudden it all flooded back to me.”
Her mind flashed to a family friend molesting her in her bedroom when she was 10 years old.
“I guess I had blocked it out because you don’t want to think about that,” said Marissa, 41. She panicked, and threw the picture across the room.
Her new housemates understood her pain better than most.
“I kind of curled up into myself and cried. Then (Kylie) came over and put her arms around me and said, ‘It’s OK.’ It was something she had gone through and she helped me through it.”
Trauma suppression is a safety mechanism, Carr said. “If your brain feels shutting down is the best thing for you and saves you, that’s what it’s going to do,” she said.
Something as seemingly innocuous as a fragrance, a person’s mannerisms or a spoken phrase can awaken memories of abuse many years or even decades later, Carr said.
When Marissa’s buried memories surfaced, Sharon took her to a group counseling session. There, Marissa signed up for individual therapy. And because crisis center clients can access SMA Healthcare’s mental health and substance abuse treatment services, she was able to get medication for the deep depression she’d been battling.
“It’s really, really helped me tremendously,” Marissa said. ”(Without the crisis center’s help) I’ll tell you exactly where I’d be — dead.”
‘Keep healing, keep going’
Kylie looked forward to testifying at her father’s trial but she didn’t get that chance.
On Feb. 21, 2018, Scott pleaded no contest to lewd or lascivious exhibition of a child under 16, promoting the sexual performance of a child and three counts of possession of a sexual performance by a child.
He was sentenced to 20 years in state prison and registered as a sex offender. He’ll be eligible for release in 2035.
His family and Marissa say it’s not enough.
“That sentence is way too light for him, especially given the overreaching things that (Kylie) has to deal with for the rest of her life,” Marissa said.
More than two years after Scott’s arrest, Kylie has been bullied at school, is still in therapy and, her mother said, suffers from blackouts — a suppression tactic she employed during her father’s abuse.
But she’s achieved breakthroughs, too — they all have.
Marissa decided together with her crisis center therapist that she has worked through her past trauma and no longer requires counseling.
She hopes speaking out about her experience “will help other people step forward and say, ‘That happened to me, too,’ and not be ashamed,” she said. “If you can help one person, you can help many.”
Sharon’s divorce from Scott is final, and she recently received her portion of proceeds from Scott’s retirement plan and the sale of their property. She and Marissa have purchased the house they live in, a much-needed layer of stability, and Sharon has ventured back into the dating scene.
Between shifts at the retail job she’s held for 20 years, she enjoys painting, photography and crafting beaded jewelry.
“I used to be cornered and fighting to get out, and (the crisis center) gave me the tools to get out,” Sharon said. “We’ve just got to keep healing, keep going.”
Helping clients gain independence is key to the crisis center’s mission, Carr said.
“I always like to tell victims that you finally found your lion inside of you,” she said. A painting of the fearsome animal hangs in her office as a reminder.
“Some have been stripped of their voice, their power,” she said. “We love to provide that safe blanket of support with different wraparound services, but we also help them find their voice, their self-esteem, to empower them.”
Kylie is a perfect example. She loved photography, and then her father took illicit pictures of her. She was interested in fashion, and he made her an unwitting model.
But the creativity that withered under Scott’s surreptitious gaze has begun to bloom again.
Kylie, now 17, plans to study sewing and fashion design at Daytona State College after she graduates high school next year. She draws dress patterns and often wears clothes she created herself. Her style has attracted some classmates’ admiration, Sharon said.
The girl who once cowered under loose-fitting clothes and hid behind her mother in public is no longer in retreat. She’s turned her armor into art.
