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Law enforcement officials are there to protect and to serve the public, but in the case of a woman interviewed for Part 13 of this series, you can’t help but wonder.
"Everybody wants to believe that our police are there to protect us," said the 40-something mother of three little girls as she told this newspaper about her family’s experience with the Division of Youth and Family Services (DYFS).
It was 9 o’clock in the morning, five days before Christmas, and the last thing on Maggie McMennamin’s (not her real name) mind was DYFS.
"Before Mark (not his real name) left for work, that morning we planned for him to take the girls to get our Christmas tree after school," Maggie recounted.
After Mark left for work, however, a knock at the door would change those plans, and change the lives they had built in an upscale section of the county.
"When I answered the door he showed me his ID and told me he was Detective Bill Kirkbride of the Cape May County Prosecutor’s Office and he would like to speak to me about a report they had received," she said. " I am very law abiding, so is my husband. I knew I had not done anything to be investigated for, so of course I let him in."
Over the next three hours of the detective’s stay, Maggie experienced, in alternate succession, feelings of fear, shock and confusion. Kirkbride told her that the prosecutor’s office had received a complaint from an unnamed party in Florida that her husband, Mark, was raping their three small daughters. He was also accused of beating and raping his wife.
"I didn’t know what to say," said Maggie, who added that she was recovering from serious surgery and was on a lot of different medications at the time, which she said clouded her thinking.
During the conversation with Kirkbride, she learned that the source of the accusations was a man she met in an online chat room who called himself John Collins and claimed to live in Chicago.
"You can be whoever you want to be online," said Maggie, who now says she is a much more savvy Internet user. During their chats online, John Collins became enraged with jealousy, Maggie said, when he learned she was happily married and did not have the feelings for him that he had for her.
"When Maggie told me about this guy, I thought he sounded weird and told her to be careful," said husband Mark.
It was when Maggie told her chat room contact her true feelings that he contacted the Prosecutor’s Office. He also involved a third party from Florida who is the one who placed the call to county authorities.
"He (Collins) got this Florida person somehow to call the Cape May County Prosecutor and accuse my husband of rape and violence," said Maggie, who said she got this information about the source from Kirkbride.
According to Maggie, there was never a doubt in the investigator’s mind that her husband was guilty of all these heinous crimes.
"Mark was tried, convicted and sentenced before Billy Kirkbride even knocked on our door," she said.
As Maggie remembers it, the investigator said to her during that seemingly interminable morning: "If you don’t cooperate we’re going to prosecute you too and you’ll go to jail with him."
Maggie said she was dumbfounded, and continuously denied that her husband of two decades could have done something like this.
"I told him, ‘You can ask anybody.’ My husband was very active in the community. His job brings him into a lot of contact with children. I told him to ask my husband. I told him he was going to buy a tree after school with the girls. I told him to ask the girls."
The investigator was unmoved.
According to Maggie, Kirkbride said to her, "You’re going to jail, and not to buy a Christmas tree if you don’t tell us what we want to hear."
He also told her that at that very moment, police officers and DYFS workers were at the children’s school questioning them.
The little girls ranged in age from 6 to 9 years old. Their names have been changed for this story. Cassandra is the oldest; next comes Dominique and then Angel.
"They called me and Dominique out of class and told us to go to the principal’s office," Cassandra said.
"I thought I was in trouble," added Dominique.
When the little girls got to the office they were met with a gauntlet of serious-faced adults: the principal, the vice principal, the school nurse, DARE officer Tony Marino, DYFS agent Margaret MacLaughlin and two other police investigators.
"The nurse looked us over for bruises or marks. Nobody told us why we were there and then one of the police officers started touching us, asking if this hurt or that hurt. Were we bruised," remembered Dominique, who said she was very scared and did not like him touching her.
"I pushed him to get away," she recalled.
According to the two sisters, who spoke to this newspaper out of the presence of their parents, they were asked questions at the meeting by one adult they did not know while the others looked on.
They asked: "Do your parents touch you or hurt you?" "Do you know what a penis is?" "Have you seen anybody’s penis?" and many more that the girls said they did not want to repeat.
"I didn’t know what was going on," said Cassandra, who thought maybe her parents had been hurt in an accident.
"It was very intimidating," Dominique added.
They were then sent back to their classrooms alone without explanation by any of the school’s personnel.
"It was very scary and confusing. A boy who sat next to me asked me what they wanted. I said the principal wanted to talk about sex," recalled Cassandra.
Angel, 6, was then taken out of class and given the same treatment.
"I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t even know what they were talking about," Angel now says of the incident that happened in the mid-1990s.
Meanwhile, back at their home, their mother was still being interrogated by Kirkbride.
"He stopped me from calling my husband or my attorney," said Maggie, who also said the police officer never advised her of her Miranda rights even when he was threatening her with jail.
When he did leave, she called her husband.
"How come nobody’s talked to me?" Mark asked.
That night at dinner the family ate in silence.
"Nobody knew what to say. We have always been so law-abiding American. My middle name was practically apple pie. We still believed they would realize their mistake and not bother us any more," said the still bewildered Maggie.
That didn’t happen. The next day a DYFS worker appeared at their door at 9 a.m.
"She sat and talked to me, as she put it, ‘mother to mother,’ assuring me she was sure we could straighten this out if I would just answer a few questions. I answered every question she had, including questions about my own childhood, my sex life, our sleeping arrangements and even if my husband and I had sex in front of the children. She acted like my friend. I told her the truth about the most intimate parts of our life. It was a big mistake. She twisted everything I said," Maggie said.
Still no one had questioned Mark.
Maggie admitted that during the interview the DYFS worker told her there would need to be a sexual abuse scan, "But I didn’t know what that was," she said.
She soon found out.
DYFS notified her of a court hearing set for the next day. When the day came, Maggie was too sick to go. Her recovery had suffered a relapse due to the traumatic events, she said. So even though he was not invited, Mark went.
Mark recalled that the judge was Valerie Armstrong, who was at a remote location, so the hearing was conducted via the telephone.
Present were two investigators from the Prosecutor’s Office, including Kirkbride, and a DYFS worker. They all objected to his being there.
"They told me I was not allowed to be there," said Mark. "They were going to court about my kids and they told me that I wasn’t allowed to be there."
The judge allowed him to stay over their objections.
As is usual when DYFS intervenes, caseworkers asked the court for temporary legal custody of the children, which was granted. The court ordered the sexual abuse scan, which was a full internal, gynecological examination of the three little girls They asked that it be scheduled for the next day. Their dad objected.
"That day they were suppose to sing in the Christmas concert at school. It was Angel’s first one. She was so excited," he said.
Mark asked the judge if the exam could take place after the girls finished singing. DYFS and the police objected.
Mark told the judge he was willing to go to jail or stay at the prosecutor’s house to ensure he was away from the children if the judge would let them go to the school Christmas concert.
According to Mark, Armstrong saw no problem with that. The judge then asked who would be driving the girls to the University Medical and Dental School of New Jersey in Stratford for the exam. They all said none of them because they were on holiday vacation after this hearing ended, according to Mark. The judge’s final instruction was that she wanted the kids to perform and then be taken up.
After the hearing, standing in the courthouse hallway, the two police investigators asked Mark some questions.
"Nobody gave me any warnings about my rights but I knew I had done nothing wrong, so I spoke to them," said Mark.
They asked him about his sex life. If his kids watched him and his wife have sex?
"Do your kids ever sleep in your bed? Are you having sex with your girls? Do you know your wife is having an affair online?" Mark recalled them asking.
At that point, he realized they did not want to hear anything from him but a confession.
"Kirkbride told me when the driver from DYFS arrived to take my daughters he would rip them from the stage personally whether they were finished or not," said Mark. He confessed that it was the closest he came to "punching somebody."
When Maggie learned of the day’s events she became extremely upset and, as she recalls it, she and Mark fought all night.
"When I realized what a sexual abuse scan was, I would have done anything to stop it. I certainly didn’t want them ‘ripped off the school stage,’" Maggie said.
The girls did not go to school the next day and Angel didn’t get to wear her new holiday dress. Instead a DYFS agent showed up to drive them and their mother to Camden County for their first gynecological examination at the ages of 9, 8 and 6.
Just before the driver’s arrival, Maggie called Kirkbride. She begged, pleaded and, in her desperation, told him she would say "anything he wanted" if they would just spare her daughters this examination.
"I told him I’ll sign anything you want me to sign just don’t make my kids do this. I was willing to put my own husband in jail knowing he was innocent to save my children," something she admits has made her feel very guilty.
Kirkbride was asked to comment on this case by this newspaper but because of the rules set by the Prosecutor’s Office, he was not permitted to speak to the media. He did refer questions to his superiors.
Chief of County Detectives Jim Rybicki did speak to this newspaper about the general policy of the office in these matters, saying their office does not comment on specific cases.
When asked about the giving of the Miranda warnings, he said: "It depends on the facts of the situation, whether it’s custodial or non-custodial."
He also said that it is perfectly proper for the Prosecutor’s Office to speak to persons who are the subject of accusations "to see if there is a basis for investigation."
And finally while emphasizing that he was not speaking to this particular case but only in general, Rybicki said: "Just because no charges are filed in a case doesn’t mean that nothing happened. It just means we didn’t have enough evidence to go forward."
Dr. Martin Finkel, who is considered an expert in the field of child rape and sexual assault, is in charge of the sexual abuse examinations for University Medical and Dental School of New Jersey, where he has others who assist him. It was one of the assistants—a woman—who performed the examinations of Cassandra, Dominique and Angel. That person is no longer with Finkel’s center.
"I was glad at least that it was a woman," their mother stated.
The examination room was a typical gynecological exam room complete with bright lights, table, stirrups and specula. It had two additional pieces of equipment – a video camera and a wide screen monitor.
"Nobody had ever touched them there," recalled their mother. "We were very strict about telling them that the bathing suit area is your private area of your body and nobody has the right to touch you there."
When they arrived, there were papers to be filled out. "I wouldn’t sign any of their permission forms," Maggie said.
The girls had to remove all of their clothes for the cameras and examination. Cassandra remembered being "very frightened and burying my head so I couldn’t see the TV."
Angel just laid there and let the doctor perform the exam, but Dominique resisted.
"I hated her," she said, recalling what she called "the most horrible event of my life."
She and her mother both recalled that she screamed and cried and had to have her legs forcibly opened. The doctor performed a thorough exam. When it was over they waited there for the official results.
"Nothing. There is no evidence of any sexual abuse," the doctor told Maggie and the DYFS agent, whose comment to Maggie was: "Well, you know there are other ways they can be sexually violated."
Finkel, whose center is in Stratford, spoke to this newspaper about the criteria used in making determinations regarding sexual abuse.
"Our examination is more than physical," stressed Finkel. "The model for this is we understand there are several amazingly similar characteristics exhibited from one child victim to the next. The dynamics are very similar."
For that reason his office takes an extensive history, looks at records from all-available treating physicians, speaks individually and privately to the child and finally does a physical examination that includes cultures and tests for disease.
"We evaluate a list of details in a contextual setting that may speak to the reality of sexual abuse. Rape is the easiest to diagnose," Finkel said.
Only then do they give an opinion.
"After all this we can say, with the absolute certainty of physical findings combined with the other gathered information whether or not there is a basis for finding sexual abuse of any kind, or that there is nothing here to substantiate," he said.
There are three reasons for making the video of the examination, according to Finkel. "Primarily it is to insure that another exam will not be necessary. Secondly, it enhances my credibility as an expert. I’m willing to stand by my finding and here is my evidence. And thirdly, if the child is ever brought back there will be a basis of comparison."
He said the videos are kept as medical records for "five years past the age of maturity, as per state law."
The girls dressed and left the hospital with their mother and the DYFS worker. "As we got back into her car for the long drive back, the DYFS worker asked the girls if they’d like to stop at McDonald’s for a Happy Meal, as if a Happy Meal would make up for them just being raped by the state of New Jersey," said Maggie.
Everyone muttered no; they just wanted to go home.
"It didn’t matter what we said, she wanted to stop, so we stopped but my kids didn’t touch a bite of the food. It was the only protest they had," their mother recalled.
Christmas day came and went. On Jan. 2 the family received a letter in the mail from DYFS regarding another court appearance. Maggie went alone.
She said that she sat in the courthouse corridor from 8:30 a.m. until past 3 p.m. with no one calling her in for court. She saw her attorney there, who offered to go in with her and told her what room he’d be in if she needed him.
Finally, Maggie saw a DYFS agent she recognized and approached her to inquire about her case.
"Oh, that’s been dismissed," came the reply. "That was closed. It’s over."
Shocked, albeit relieved, Maggie went home.
"It may be over for DYFS and the Prosecutor’s Office, but it isn’t over for us," said Maggie, who said she has forgiven all those involved because her religion tells her to do so.
In adding up the casualties of the assault on the family, Mark mentions his union with Maggie.
"It hurt our marriage, that’s for sure," he said. "The injury keeps going on and on."
"Our children’s belief that we can protect them and our authority as parents (has been ruined)," Maggie said.
Added Mark: "And nobody ever apologized."
DYFS officials did not return several phone calls requesting comment.
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