Of Abuse, Betrayal, Vindication

BURLINGTON, Vt. — For years the two sisters told no one of the abuse, the heinous violations that their parents insisted were normal expressions of love. Throughout their childhood, sex with their stepfather was part of daily life, as routine as brushing their teeth.

When at last one sister confided in a trusted adult, state authorities were notified. One child protection official assured the child, then 13, that “either he or I would be out of the home in a very short time,” Toni Patterson Plummer recalled. “She stressed that something would happen quickly.” All that happened was that her stepfather’s assaults increased in frequency.

So this is a story of betrayal, abandonment and broken trust. But in the case of Patterson Plummer, now 27, and her 24-year-old sister, Terri Sabia, it is also a story of vindication. Earlier this month, the pair won a $1-million settlement from Vermont’s child protection agency, a clear acknowledgment of the damage they suffered because the agency failed to intervene on their behalf. But Patterson Plummer, as outspoken as her sister is shy, said the most important part of the decision is not the money, but a provision that makes them unpaid advisors to the Department of Social and Rehabilitative Services, the very agency that let the girls down.

“You can’t put a dollar figure on this,” Patterson Plummer said. “This was about being heard.”

Tom Nelson, an attorney for the National Center for Victims’ Rights in Arlington, Va., said victims’ assistance groups around the country are hailing the Vermont case as an important advance in the growing push for “sovereign accountability”--holding a state responsible for individual damages. He also lauded the settlement as an unusual example of how victims are seeking highly personalized forms of justice. “To have it written into the settlement, for adult survivors of child abuse to be invited in--asked to participate in policy--that is unique,” Nelson said.

Kurt Hughes, the Burlington lawyer who represented the sisters in the five-year civil suit, called the seven-figure settlement “a wake-up call” for child welfare agencies. But he echoed his client in contending that the real victory wasn’t monetary. “Toni isn’t kidding when she says the money is secondary,” Hughes said. “It really was about having the powerless be heard.”

The sisters’ first efforts to report the abuse began 14 years ago, long before he became Vermont’s commissioner of Social and Rehabilitative Services, said William Young, who moved for a swift settlement after hearing court testimony from Patterson Plummer and Martha Scales, the youth group leader to whom Patterson Plummer first confided in 1983. He noted that Dennis LaPlant, the stepfather, was found guilty of felony child abuse in 1992 and is serving a seven-to-10-year sentence. He said his agency’s insurer would be responsible for the bulk of what he called a “very significant” settlement.

Young, too, emphasized the value of including the victims in the process of redress. “It would be foolish not to meet with them,” said Young, who will hold his first meeting with Patterson Plummer this week. “If they hadn’t requested it, I probably would have suggested it. I didn’t think of it as groundbreaking or anything else. I just thought of it as common sense.”

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Patterson Plummer and Sabia paint a heart-gripping portrait of family debauchery. Both say the abuse began soon after their mother, Linda, married LaPlant, a paper mill worker. The girls were 7 and 5 years old.

“It began as touching and groping, and progressed. When I was 10 is when the actual penetration began,” Patterson Plummer said. She is a small woman with expressive brown eyes and dark, shiny hair. She has told this story many times, beginning when she first blurted out her tale to Scales. The impact hasn’t diminished.

“Both Denny and my mother told me I was being prepared for marriage,” she said, pausing during breakfast at a coffee shop here. “They said he was teaching me ‘closeness.’ ”

Until Sabia was 14 and became pregnant by LaPlant, neither sister knew that the other was being abused. “His exact words were that it was our little secret, and I couldn’t tell nobody,” Sabia said. Her parents forced her to abort the pregnancy.

They also required Patterson Plummer to lead a Cinderella-like existence, baby-sitting her sister and a younger brother while her parents worked. She dressed the children for school, cooked and cleaned--though not always to her stepfather’s exacting specifications.

“He’d go on these inspections,” she said. “If one fork was dirty, I’d have to rewash all the dishes.”

Patterson Plummer was 12 when she fell on the school playground and complained to a friend that it hurt “down there.” Her friend recoiled as Patterson Plummer explained why she was so sore. When Patterson Plummer went home and told her parents what had happened, “they said they didn’t understand why my friend’s dad wasn’t showing her this kind of love.” It was Patterson Plummer’s first clue that her experience might not be the norm.

Reports from the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse show more than 3 million cases of child abuse and neglect in this country in 1996. Joy Byers, director of communications for the nonprofit organization, said that every day in this country, three children die as a result of such abuse and neglect. She lamented that “we have become sort of accustomed to these figures. When you start talking millions, when you talk about so many children, it is hard to comprehend.”

In Patterson Plummer’s household, after all, incest was “the family tradition.” Her mother reminded her repeatedly that as a girl she had sex with her brothers, and she turned out just fine. Testimony from LaPlant’s criminal trial shows that when Patterson Plummer, then 14, reported the abuse to her high school guidance counselor, and a county official showed up to investigate, her mother remonstrated, “It’s as much their fault as it is his. They run around without their bathrobes. He’s only human. What would any man do?”

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In failing to separate the sisters from their abuser, Vermont authorities clearly fell down on the job, said Anna Kokotovic, executive director of CALM (Child Abuse Listening and Mediation), a nonprofit group in Santa Barbara devoted to preventing and treating child abuse. “We are vigilant in California,” she said. “Yet cases still fall between the cracks. We have a vigilant system--we also have an overworked system. The number of workers is not adequate to respond in every single instance.”

Kokotovic observed that while awareness about child sexual abuse in families has grown, the social climate has shifted to a preference for family preservation. “We work with cases where we ‘know’ something is happening, but there is not enough evidence to remove a child,” she said. Still, she said, the Vermont case sends a message that “the system needs to be accountable, to pay attention to the safety and needs of those they are supposed to protect.”

But in California, the kind of civil action undertaken by Sabia and Patterson Plummer would be difficult to initiate. Boalt Hall School of Law professor Steven Barnett, an expert on torts, said citizens generally are barred from suing the state for failing to protect them. The exception is when a “special relationship” is established between the state and the citizen; for example, if a protection order has been issued against a perpetrator who then abuses the victim who is supposedly protected. Under those circumstances, Barnett said, he was not aware of any statutory limit to the amount of damages a citizen might seek in suing a state agency.

Sabia, single mother of a 4-year-old girl, said she is hopeful that her meetings with commissioner Young will lead to “better judgment on their parts. Hopefully, they’ll learn to do their jobs better.” Sabia said she plans to go to law school, with the goal of representing victims of sexual abuse.

To escape her abusive home life, Patterson Plummer married at 17 and quickly had two boys. She chose a man who was “big and strong--I knew he could beat up Denny.” But he didn’t. By 21, she was divorced. Soon after, Patterson Plummer was picnicking with her sons when one of them noticed a figure lurking behind a tree. Patterson Plummer looked up and saw her stepfather, exposing himself. She reported him, one day before the statute of limitations on criminal child abuse was scheduled to expire.

Sabia said that she is eager to get on with her life and that she is glad the case is over. But Patterson Plummer, a psychiatric nurse whose second husband teaches disabled children, said that in a way, the case has become her life.

“I don’t feel it’s over just because I won a case. I feel like it’s an ongoing process,” she said. “I want to use this experience to educate other people, to speak out and advocate, for ourselves, and for our children.”