13/10/03

One Family's Nightmare 

Scott Rapp 

Syracuse Post-Standard

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Anne Sutton thought she was living in an episode of her dad's famous television show.

"I remember telling a friend this was so much like the 'Twilight Zone' that I was expecting my father to come out and end all this," said Sutton, whose father, the late Rod Serling, created the sci-fi show in 1959.

The nightmare they have been living through began with a telephone call on a dreary February afternoon last year.

The Suttons had been upset that their daughter, Erica, was defying their order to stay out of Internet chat rooms. Late at night, Erica would talk on the computer with people who claimed to have multiple personalities and said they were sexually abused.

When her parents confronted Erica, she became incensed. They immediately suspended her computer privileges. The next day, concerned about the blowup, the Suttons called Erica's therapist at school. The therapist cut them short and passed the call to a Tompkins County social worker.

Get off the phone, the social worker told Doug. Then, to Anne: Hurry to school. "Leave your husband home," the social worker said. She didn't explain.

At school, Anne learned the unthinkable: Erica, a troubled 16-year-old, had accused her father of raping and sodomizing her for nine years, from the time she was 1 until she was 10.

None of it was true.

It didn't matter.

From school, Erica went to an aunt's house, then to a mental health clinic and then in April _ when a judge awarded custody to the county _ to foster care. Erica wouldn't speak to her father or return to her family's split-level home in Ithaca for nearly a year.

Although no charges were ever filed, and Erica eventually admitted she was lying, the Suttons were put on a statewide registry of sexual abuse and maltreatment offenders, where they remain.

"Very simply, what occurred here is the government ... tore a family apart," said Scott Miller, one of two lawyers representing the Suttons.

The couple has filed a $10 million lawsuit in federal court in Syracuse alleging Tompkins County and social services violated their constitutional rights to parent their daughter, filed misleading statements with family court, and failed to investigate Erica's allegations fairly before taking custody.

The county Department of Social Services said they believed Erica's allegations, even though there was no medical evidence of sexual abuse, no psychiatric evaluation was conducted, and the girl's own therapist doubted the story.

Child Protective Services caseworker Cindy Jacobson, in a deposition, said Erica offered few details such as times, places or events to corroborate her allegations. Jacobson interviewed Erica twice at length, spoke to her several more times, and said she believed the teen largely because she stuck to her story under questioning.

More often than not, reports that a child has been sexually abused prove difficult to substantiate. Last year, 7,245 of the 9,872 sexual abuse reports in New York _ 73 percent _ lacked enough credible evidence to be supported, according to the state Office of Children and Family Services.

The Suttons say their case shows how easily Social Services can remove a child. Their message: If it can happen to them, it can happen to anyone.

"I was so angry at the system and so astounded this kind of stuff could happen," Doug Sutton said. "I just remember thinking this was obscene and I'm going to fight it ... It's the system that needs to be ashamed of itself for allowing this to happen."

Sutton, who repeatedly denied the allegations of sex abuse, said his architect's business nearly collapsed as he devoted his time to the custody battle over Erica. The state recently took away his driver's license because he refused to reimburse the county for Erica's $8,060 foster care bill. Medical and legal bills total more than $300,000 and continue to grow.

Anne Sutton, an early childhood educator, said she was too depressed to leave the house most days, missing so much time at work that she was replaced. Because she's on the sex offender registry, she said, she can't get another teaching job.

The story finally unwound when family court ordered a psychiatric evaluation of Erica and her parents. Dr. Robert Alpern, of Atlanta, Ga., concluded that Erica was suffering from a delusional disorder and that her allegations involving her father "were patently false."

Alpern found that parts of a short story written by Erica about a girl named Angel, who was sexually abused by her father between the ages of 1 and 10, had been plagiarized from the book "Sybil," about a women with multiple personalities. He also concluded the Suttons are "normal parents" and that their daughter, who needed psychiatric help, was being harmed by the "noxious external influences of (Social Services) agents, employees and representatives."

Eleven months after that fateful phone call, the Department of Social Services dropped its case and the Suttons regained custody of Erica. Now 17, she is undergoing inpatient psychiatric treatment in an undisclosed facility and has recanted her allegations about her father.